By Gabrielle Kennedy /asdf 23-02-2012

Formmuseets Vänner and Konstfack, Stockholm’s design academy, are involved in an ongoing campaign to raise awareness about the importance of Stockholm having its own dedicated design museum.  Last month a discussion and debate focussing on how such a design might function was held.  Some of the invited speakers were Li Edelkoort, Daniel Charny, Studio Formafantasma, Daniel Sachs and Nina Stritzler-levine.

“This discussion has been going on in Stockholm for over twenty years,” says Simone Farresin of Studio Formafantasma. “Now the issue is what can a design museum do for the design scene in Stockholm.”

Farresin is Italian, but Eindhoven trained and based.  He finds it interesting that neither Holland nor Italy have a truly dedicated design museum.  “Both countries have a rich design history but neither have a dedicated museum.”

Opinions varied but what remained unanimous during the Stockholm debate was that any museum of this kind should not be a national portrait of design.  “It can’t just be Swedish,” Farresin says.  “The collection can be focussed on Swedish design, but I think it is much better for the activities of the museum to be broader and about the design discipline in general.”

Edelkoort was the most outspoken and offered many practical solutions.  “She thought it was better to not focus too much on a collection because that is hugely expensive and requires an enormous amount of storage.  To start you can have an exhibition space to hold events and perhaps work from there at collating an archive rather than a complete collection.”

The archive versus collection issue is an interesting one but was not further addressed.

From an autonomous designer’s perspective, having a museum makes great sense.  “They commission work which is really nice, “ Farresin points out.  “Like the Textile Museum in Tilburg does … but on top of that it seems that the reach of design is growing and a museum is a place where things can get discussed.”

Farresin is complimentary of institutes like Premsela, the Netherlands Institute for Design and Fashion, but says a design museum could do something more.  “Premsela takes care of how Dutch design is portrayed and promoted so it has specific goals in mind,” he says, “a museum could be more general and more far reaching.”

Farresin also admits that as a foreigner he feels ignorant about Dutch design history.  “Of course we all know what happened in the 90s.   We also know Rietveld and that period.  But what happened in between?” he says.  “There is a huge gap and I don’t think we are the only one who just don’t know much about that time.  There are some articles written, but the information is not easy to find.  Museums are necessary because everything can be placed in it proper perspective.”

Design is shaped in time – it reflects changing attitudes and social developments.  Dutch design is differs to Swedish and Italian design.  “But we need the tools to understand why that is and when it comes to Holland, there is a big gap that makes that basically impossible.”

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