About

The task of Skissernas Museum – Museum of Artistic Process and Public Art is to collect, catalogue, exhibit, maintain and preserve sketch material, preliminary studies and models for art in the public environment.

Skissernas Museum – Museum of Artistic Process and Public Art has the world’s foremost collection of sketches and preliminary studies for public art. Since the museum’s foundation in 1934, artists have donated or sold their sketches to the museum and the collection is continuously growing. Every year, the museum receives a large number of visits from researchers and students as well as requests for loans of artworks for exhibitions.

In addition to the collection of over 30 000 objects, there are also extensive archives accessible to both researchers and students. Since the museum’s foundation in 1934, its correspondence with artists has been archived and many artists have donated their private collections of letters, resulting in an extensive archive of correspondence. The museum also has an archive of press images and cuttings, consisting of around 150 000 articles concerning public art from Swedish and international daily newspapers and journals from the 1930s to the present day. The museum also preserves the artists’ project descriptions and photographs documenting the creation of their artworks. There is also a reference library with literature relating to public art.

These archives, together with the collection of sketches, offer an opportunity not only to discover how public art comes into existence but also to find out about public debate on the artworks, the statements of selection juries, reviews and the artist’s own thoughts communicated in letters and in personal notes.

Thanks to a grant from the Swedish Foundation for Humanities and Social Sciences and the Crafoord Foundation, the majority of the collection has been digitised and a modern search and organisation system has been implemented. Read more about our research projects.