TELLGREN, Anna (ed.)
Pontus Hultén and Moderna Museet. From Stockholm to Paris

Pontus Hultén (1924–2006) worked at Moderna Museet in Stockholm between 1958 and 1973. In 1960 he was appointed director. It was in this role that he built the collection and the Museum’s international reputation, with exhibitions such as Movement in Art (1961), American Pop Art. 106 Forms of Love and Despair (1964), SHE–A Cathedral (1966), and Andy Warhol (1968). In 2005 Pontus Hultén donated his private art collection, his library, and his archives to Moderna Museet.

The purpose of Moderna Museet’s current research is to focus on his practice as an exhibition curator and museum director and to explore the legacy of the legendary 1960s and its implications for the Museum today. Pontus Hultén and Moderna Museet. From Stockholm to Paris is the second book produced in this context, and addresses the later period of Pontus Hultén’s time at Moderna Museet, from the mid-1960s to 1973. It also looks at a few of the projects he worked on after leaving Moderna Museet, which are richly represented in Pontus Hultén’s archive.

The preface by Gitte Ørskou is followed by a longer introduction highlighting the exhibitions Andy Warhol (1968), Bernd and Hilla Becher (1970), the presentations of Joseph Beuys and Günter Uecker (1971), and Utopias and Visions 1871–1981 (1971). The ensuing chapters discuss the exhibitions SHE – A Cathedral (1966) at Moderna Museet in Stockholm and The Machine as Seen at the End of the Mechanical Age, which Pontus Hultén produced in 1968 for the Museum of Modern Art in New York. The books in Pontus Hultén’s library are analysed, and the final essay deals with the art school Institut des Hautes Études en Arts Plastiques (IHEAP) in Paris. An interview with Pontus Hultén from 1971 published in the French art magazine Opus International is also included, in which he reflects on the museum of the future. [publisher's note]

Foreword by Gitte Ørskou. Texts by Annika Gunnarsson, Ylva Hillström, Lars Bang Larsen, Yann Pavie and Anna Tellgren.

Published by Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König, 2023
Design by Karl Stefan Andersson
Art History / Curatorial Studies