Moderna Museet
modern and contemporary art museum in Stockholm, Sweden
Moderna Museet (lit. 'the modern museum') is a state museum for modern and contemporary art and design, located on the island of Skeppsholmen in central Stockholm, opened in 1958.
History
After the original opening, in 2009, the museum also opened Moderna Museet Malmö in Malmö, in a building that had housed the Rooseum centre for contemporary art. The Moderna Museet in Stockholm has been the subject of scholarship on museum history, preservation, and institutional planning.
Collection
The museum houses Swedish and international modern and contemporary art, including pieces by Pablo Picasso and Salvador Dalí, and a model of Tatlin's Tower. The museum's collection also includes key works by artists such as Marcel Duchamp, Louise Bourgeois, Niki de Saint Phalle, Henri Matisse and Robert Rauschenberg, as well as ongoing acquisitions by contemporary artists.
On 8 November 1993, six works by Picasso and two by Georges Braque, totaling more than £40 million, were stolen from the museum in a coup in which the burglars came in through the roof by night, copying a method from the 1955 French film Rififi. All six of the Picasso paintings and one of the Braque paintings have been recovered.
Pontus Hultén Collection
In 2005, former museum director Pontus Hultén bequeathed over 700 works of art to Moderna Museet, along with his archive and library. A few works of the collection are on display with the museum's permanent collection; many others are exhibited in the purpose-built Pontus Hultén Study Gallery.
Sculpture park
The museum has a sculpture park on the island with works by sculptors of diverse nationalities.
“Moderna Museet” enters the record as modern and contemporary art museum in Stockholm, Sweden. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Moderna, Museet and modern can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“Moderna Museet” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Moderna, Museet and modern provides the most credible route into that argument.
The strongest evidence will usually combine a dated visual record with documents produced by the authority responsible for the place. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 5, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1274511. VIAF identifies the subject as 125491791. The Library of Congress control number is n50069325. Authority coordinates are 59.326, 18.084. 4 of 7 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1958, 2009, 1993 and 1955.
Modern boundaries and familiar names can conceal earlier jurisdictions or structures that do not align with the present site. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Treat names, boundaries and functions as historically changeable. Maps, plans, inventories and administrative records can clarify what the place meant at different dates.
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Contemporary maps, plans, listed-building records, estate papers and the responsible local or national archive.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Moderna Museet”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Moderna Museet primary sources, Moderna Museet archive and Moderna research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
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This entry incorporates text from “Moderna Museet” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.