Susanna Pettersson made the start. The art historian warned last week in a text in Svenska Dagbladet that the National Museum would probably have to move out of Stockholm because it could no longer afford the rent for the building in which it has been housed since 1866. Two days later, the news came that the National Museum of Natural History would be closed to the public until further notice, because several ceilings threaten to collapse. The Medieval Museum, which was built around Stockholm’s old city walls, has to close indefinitely this autumn because the administration of the Riksdag wants to use the premises. Gothenburg’s museums are sounding the alarm that their rental costs have doubled since 2011. And things don’t look any better in smaller towns either: Luitgard Löw warned, the director of the Västergötland Museum in Skara, that her house will probably no longer exist in ten years. Olov Amelin, her colleague from the Jamtli open-air museum in Östersund, said in the same text that they had saved where they could but could no longer keep the stocks.
Sweden’s museums and the high rents: How the conservative government reacts – Culture
