seminar: how do museums write the history of the welfare city?

In 2021, a new transdisciplinary, international, IRFD-funded research network was launched by a group of researchers from the Aarhus School of Architecture. The purpose of the network is to examine the representation of the welfare city in mass media. In an upcoming seminar on 9 and 10 March 2023 at ArkDes in Stockholm, the Swedish Centre for Architecture and Design, the network will discuss the role of the museum in society with a focus on how museums write history and why they write it the way they do.

01.03.2023

‘ArkDes holds Sweden’s largest collection of architectural representations—made up of over 500,000 photographs, 2,000 architectural models, and 4 million drawings, sketches, and other documents. The network collaborates with this culture-bearing and -defining institution, because it has a major national and international responsibility for the dissemination and the concept of architecture. We in the network are interested in knowing what the curators, researchers, and management at this museum think about the legacy of the Nordic welfare state, and how the welfare city and its architecture are presented and represented in the museum’s collections and exhibitions’, says associate professor and network project leader Anne Elisabeth Toft from the Aarhus School of Architecture.

TREDJE HÖGHUSET PANORAMA. Stockholm. Foto. Fotograf Sune Sundahl, 1963. ArkDes Samling

‘Yes, we are interested in the narratives that ArkDes constructs, how it does so, and why. It is the same interest that lies behind the network’s collaboration with the National Museum in Copenhagen. The latter also holds a large responsibility as the one that per definition collects and preserves our national treasures in Denmark’, adds network coordinator Jannie Rosenberg Bendsen (Cand.mag., PhD) from the Aarhus School of Architecture.

The network’s reflection on the museum as a medium for the representation of architecture connects to the network members’ more general and comprehensive interest in mass media as a primary site for developing architectural discourse.

The seminar in Stockholm will not only deal with the discussion of the museum and its function in society; it will also shed light on a large number of other mass media and what kind of representations they have produced about the post-war city of the Scandinavian welfare state.

Against this backdrop, the seminar will look into what makes the Scandinavian model different from other welfare state models—such as, for example, the British one—and examine whether the Scandinavian model has influenced its own representation.

Höghus Exteriör, arkitekter Leif Reinius og Sven Backström. Foto, 1962. Fotograf ukendt. ArkDes Samling

About the Network

The research network The Representation of the Welfare City was formed in 2021 to contribute to a more nuanced understanding of the prejudices and expectations that the modern welfare city has encountered over time. ‘We want to bring together experts from Denmark and abroad who, like us, work with welfare architecture and representations of architecture’, says Anne Elisabeth Toft.

Participation in the seminar in Stockholm is free of charge, but the number of participants will be limited. For more information, please contact Jannie Rosenborg Bendsen: jrb@aarch.dk.

Sources

Core Members of the Network

Anne Elisabeth Toft, PhD (Network Project Leader), Associate Professor, Aarhus School of Architecture
Jannie Rosenberg Bendsen, PhD (Network Coordinator), Researcher, Aarhus School of Architecture
Tom Nielsen, PhD, Professor, Aarhus School of Architecture
Claus Peder Pedersen, PhD, Professor MSO, Aarhus School of Architecture
Morten Nielsen, Morten Nielsen, PhD, Professor, National Museum of Denmark
Thordis Arrhenius, Professor, KTH Royal Institute of Technology
Michelle Provoost, PhD, Professor, Crimson Architectural Historians / Institute for New Town
Karen Olesen, Associate Professor, Aarhus School of Architecture
Anders Troelsen, Professor Emeritus, Aarhus School of Architecture