Museum of Care

Curated by Lotte Løvholm

In 1939 Malmö Museum in Southern Sweden received a donation from private donor Oscar Elmquist with the purpose of establishing a ‘Latvian collection’ at the museum. Seven months later Latvia was first occupied by the Soviet Army, then followed Nazi Germany, and the country finally underwent 45 years of Soviet occupation. Many Latvians fled to Sweden in 1946 and the same year Malmö Art Museum became a refugee centre for six months, providing shelter for survivors from the concentration camps. In 1947 the museum exhibited Latvian exile artists and more artworks were added to the “Latvian collection”.

‘Museum of Care’ uncovers the background of this forgotten collection of 45 Latvian artworks. The publication includes the essay ‘Through Wormholes’ by Lotte Løvholm looking at a selection of works from the collection by Niklāvs Strunke, Kārlis Baltgailis, Jānis Liepiņš, Jāzeps Grosvalds and Eduards Dzenis. The narrative unfolds like a play with the protagonists being an art museum and five paintings, and the Two World Wars being our antagonists. The forgotten collection is connected to suppressed memories in Løvholm’s own family story in Latvia.

Included in the publication are:
‘Through Wormholes’ by Lotte Løvholm 
'A Living Museum’ by Cecilia Widenheim telling the story of Malmö Museum as a refugee centre in 1946, 
'The Fate of Our Artworks’ by Ojārs Jēgens 
‘Hegemony, Liberation and Transnational Activism in World War I’ by Mart Kuldkepp 
and ‘Portable Landscape’ by the Latvian Centre for Contemporary Art 
The book can be purchased at Tensta konsthall. It is donation based and the money will be donated to Kontrapunkt in Malmö.

Museum of Care.pdf