How to tell the story of a building that was never built? Monika Sosnowska, who was invited by the Princess Estelle Cultural Foundation to create a sculpture in a park on Stockholm's Djurgården Island, tackled this subject. In the acclaimed artist's work, marble fragments, abandoned plans and contemporary concrete forms are arranged in a space that evokes the past and tells a story of never-tapped potential. "Museum" does not offer answers - rather, it opens the field for reflection on the past and the potential of architectural fantasies.
On June 3 this year, a sculpture created by acclaimed Polish artist Monika Sosnowska was officially unveiled in a park next to Rosendal Palace on Stockholm's Djurgården Island. "Museum" is a site-specific installation, consisting of several concrete planes, with forms derived from historical architecture - not only a wall or staircase, but also an arch and a column. The contemporary concrete structures form a backdrop for historical elements - 11 marble architectural details; Ionic, Corinthian and composite bases and capitals.
Museum, work by Monika Sosnowska in Djurgården, Stockholm
Photo courtesy of the artist and Princess Estelle Cultural Foundation
Monika Sosnowska Museum
The meaning of the puzzling composition is illuminated after learning about the history of the place where the installation "Museum" was created:
The artwork was installed on the terrace of Rosendal, in the place where, it is believed, Charles XIV John intended to build an art museum. The installation can be seen as traces or memories of the building, as a contemporary monument to the historic, defunct museum.
- writes Sara Sandström, Executive Director at the Princess Estelle Cultural Foundation.
As we read in a brochure issued by the Princess Estelle Culture Foundation, the marble details were to be placed on the facades of the museum building, designed in 1830 by Swedish architect Fredrik Blom, who had previously built the Rosendal Palace for Charles XIV John just next door. Near it, as planned by the monarch, the first of the Bernadotte dynasty, which still reigns today, was to house a large art museum 80 meters long and 16 meters wide. The symmetrical building was to consist of a centrally located rotunda and two one-story wings housing painting galleries. Work lasted a decade, and a lot of structural elements were built, but for unknown reasons, Charles XIV John decided to abandon the project. The only remnants of the ambitious project are drawings and hundreds of marble details, stored in Stockholm museums.
Museum, work by Monika Sosnowska in Djurgården, Stockholm
photo courtesy of the artist and the Princess Estelle Cultural Foundation
museum potential
Monika Sosnowska, inspired by the history of the building-potential, created a sculpture that tells the story of uncertainty, immanent in the relationship between the project and the realization that never happened:
Eleven marble pieces, originally intended to decorate the museum's facade and interior, were incorporated into the installation and presented in a surprising way. They balance on, lean against or pierce the concrete structures - the constructions bring to mind fragments of a building: a wall, a portal, a column or a staircase. The smooth surface and finely carved details of the marble elements contrast with the rawness of the concrete - creating a meeting of historical and contemporary materials. Sosnowska's sculpture creates a space surrounded by a park-like landscape on Rosendal Terrace hill. The installation stands on an uneven, gravelly surface from which wild plants grow. Visitors can step inside the work and, moving between its various parts, imagine an art museum that never existed - or that could exist anywhere.
- reads a brochure issued on the occasion of the sculpture's unveiling.
The work on the sculpture took three years - it included queries, cleaning the marble pieces and installing the objects in the park.
Museum, Monika Sosnowska's work in Djurgården, Stockholm
photo courtesy of the artist and the Princess Estelle Cultural Foundation
royal reception
The work quickly won praise from critics and the Swedish press, who hailed Monika Sosnowska's installation as "brilliant," as well as from members of the Swedish Royal Family themselves, who attended the unveiling of the work on June 3 this year:
Nearly two hundred years ago, King Charles IV John had a vision of a grand art museum in Rosendal on Djurgården. The museum was never built, but this year's work created at the Princess Estelle Sculpture Park brings back this almost completely forgotten history. Through Monika Sos nowska's sculpture, named "Muzuem," the present is intertwined with the past.
- commented the work of Prince Daniel, who led the inauguration at the Sculpture Park.
Museum, a work by Monika Sosnowska in Djurgården, Stockholm
Photo courtesy of the artist and the Princess Estelle Cultural Foundation
Monika Sosnowska's work contributes to the Sculpture Park, on the island of Djurgården in Stockholm, which has been under construction since 2020, when an open-air exhibition of works by American sculptor Alice Aycock was organized there at the initiative of the Princess Estelle Cultural Foundation. In the following years, more art objects were added, created by male and female artists from around the world - Scandinavian duo Elmgreen & Dragset, British sculptor Yinka Shonibare, Swedish artist Charlotte Gyllenhammar and Italian artist Giuseppe Penonego.
Djurgården Island in Stockholm
© CC BY-SA 3.0 | Wikimedia Commons
Monika Sosnowska is one of Poland's most important contemporary artists, known for her sculptures and installations inspired by modernist architecture. Her works, often monumental and made of industrial materials, explore the tensions between form and function, permanence and destruction. Her most important works include "Corridor," which depicts a cramped corridor of a social-modernist public building with walls covered in green piping, the sculptural "Exercises in Construction" or "1:1" - an installation that represented Poland at the 52nd Venice Art Biennale in 2007.
