Public Art in Restricted Space: Rethinking Art and Democracy in Sweden and Norway 1940-2023

In scholarly discussions of the social impact of public art, open spaces such as parks and public squares act as discursive focal points.

Yet in Sweden and Norway, the cultural democratic ambition of the welfare state has been to make art accessible to all and today we find state-funded public art in bolted spaces such as the government office and defense facilities, as well as in prison institutions and juvenile homes.

This points to the fundamental problem from which the project sets out; earlier research has failed to acknowledge how a large quantity of state-funded permanent art relates to its destined site.

It also suggests that questions on the democratic function of public art must include the locked facilities housing incarcerated individuals as well as the political and military elite.

I will argue that increased attention to this problem will give us new knowledge on the democratic role of public art in Sweden and Norway.

The project will ground this study in a quantitative and qualitative investigation of the permanent artworks that the Public Art Agency Sweden and Public Art Norway have installed in restricted public space, since 1940 and 1976 respectively, until today.

It will test a critical notion of governance for evaluating how artworks contribute and respond to the governmental sites where they are installed.