ENG – Carl Eldhs Ateljémuseum

Brita Eldh (1907-2000) was the daughter of Carl and Elise Eldh. In 1963, she established a foundation in her parents’ name and then ran the museum on her own until the early 1990s. Currently, the work of cataloging Brita’s left-behind material is being completed with the support of the The Swedish National Heritage Board and Region Stockholm. Here we share some glimpses from the archive.

As the curator of Carl Eldh’s Ateljémuseum, Brita took care of administration, PR, exhibitions, cataloguing, and all the practical care of the collection and the house more or less alone. In 1968 she moved into the studio’s new extension, a small apartment to the east that extends the original study. Here she lived and worked, in a studio where the boundaries between a home and a business, the private, public and professional were constantly under negotiation.

The work with the museum was periodically marred by conflicts with the authorities about Bellevuehöjden and the future of the surroundings. Brita’s combativeness became visible when Bellevuehöjden was threatened in the seventies and eighties by plans for a highway, and in the nineties by new office buildings. Together with, among others, Ingegerd and Greger Carpelan, who also lived on the hill, she organized protests and actualized the cultural and historical values of the area in family days and special screenings. Petitions were made available for signing at the museum, and the attention attracted many new visitors.

In 1980, Brita was awarded DN På Stan’s Gudlkänga award with the motivation: “With a great deal of idealism and personal sacrifice, she has taken care of her father’s studio in Bellevue and is now in the middle of the fight to save the environment around Brunnsviken.”

Brita also helped initiate the process of marking the studio and its garden as a listed cultural monument, something that only became a reality in 2010.

The renowned, Swedish and London-based interior designer Beata Heuman has been invited to renew the museum’s entrance, shop, wardrobe and guest WC. The careful restoration and the new interior of the ancillary spaces of the premises are expected to be completed when the museum opens for the season in April 2024.

“Carl Eldh’s Studio Museum has a special atmosphere. The building feels imbued with history: in the fabric of its humble materials that realise Östberg’s architectural vision, Eldh’s decades of creative work undertaken there and his daughter Brita’s joyful and entrepreneurial spirit which seems to permeate its walls. The museum offers us a glimpse into another time, spanning across generations.

Interiors are usually transient, but those that are preserved hold great value and reveal so much about the individuals who lived there. Walking through certain rooms is like reading someone’s diary, which as a self-confessed snoop I find irresistible. We have to be grateful to Brita for having the foresight to preserve the Ateljémuseum and its contents for us to experience today.

With our work I hope to add depth to the few ancillary spaces that sit alongside the studio museum, whose interiors have not yet been sympathetically considered in the context of the whole. My ambition is that in so doing the original rooms will be enhanced and shine even brighter. I’m honoured to play a small part in the history of the museum” says Beata Heuman.

“Beata Heuman has a fantastic ability to create interesting and inviting environments with small means and surprising color combinations and patterns. Beata has taken on the assignment with great personal commitment and understanding of both the history of the building and the museum’s needs today. We look forward to opening the museum after a spring of careful restoration and at the same time presenting Beata’s design,” says Sara Bourke, museum director.

Carl Eldh’s studio in Bellevue Park was built in 1919 according to drawings by architect Ragnar Östberg. Thanks to daughter Brita Eldh, the property was converted into a museum in 1963 with the inventories and collection intact. In 2010, the property became a listed building.

Brita Eldh (1907-2000) was the daughter of Carl and Elise Eldh. In 1963, she established a foundation in her parents’ name and then ran the museum on her own until the early 1990s. Currently we are working to archive Brita’s left behind material with the support of the Swedish National Heritage Board and Region Stockholm. Here we share glimpses from the archive.

In the mid-1920s, Brita and Elise Eldh moved to California, where they bought a house in Alhambra, Los Angeles. In its large garden, sculptures by Carl Eldh was placed, and it also forms the stage for many of the images depicting Brita as a professional dancer. They bring their interest in gardening with them to the studio in Bellevue when they travel back to Sweden. In the folder “A few words about Carl Eldh’s studio museum” which is distributed when the museum opens to the public in 1963, Brita writes:

“The idyllic studio garden was laid out in 1919 by Elise Eldh, who had a peculiar ability to plant beautiful gardens wherever she went in the world. She had a particularly fine eye for lines and for the design of different environments. There are no exaggerations here, only a soft and unsought floral accompaniment to the studio building. Much of what Mother Elise planted is still there, such as the yellow daylilies along the fence, the saxifrage on the stone slab, daffodils, narcisses and lilies of the valley, rhododendrons and jasmine.”

Brita Eldh (1907-2000) was the daughter of Carl and Elise Eldh. In 1963, she established a foundation in her parents’ name and then ran the museum on her own until the early 1990s. During the autumn, the Britas archive project has gain momentum. With the help of a professional archivist, we have been able to start a comprehensive list of the material which is now slowly unfolding and telling about Brita Eldh’s work in transforming Carl Eldh’s studio into a museum.

Through the archive, we have approached Brita’s own career in the performing arts, with performances on several stages in Los Angeles, but also at Dramaten in Stockholm. Brita and Elise Eldh moved to the United States already in the 1920s, where Brita developed as a mezzo-soprano and dancer, while at the same time presenting Carl Eldh’s sculptures in new contexts on the other side of the Atlantic. Already we see that the archive includes rich material of photography, with images taken by iconic photographers such as Louis Fleckenstein and Henry B. Goodwin. In the photographs we see Brita Eldh dancing with great empathy and several images can be found both in the National Museum’s collections and The Getty Collections.

During the latter part of her life, as museum director at Carl Eldh’s Studio Museum, she arranged recurring salons with song in focus. The archive material now becomes an important part in understanding the museum’s history and a starting point for new programs, artistic productions and other happenings in the museum.

June, July and August have broken all previous attendance records at Carl Eldhs Studio Museum and is the historically most well-attended summer since the museum opened in 1963. Compared to the same period last year (2022), visitor numbers have increased by as much as 54% (compared to a national increase of 8% according to a new report from Sveriges museer). The monthly records have replaced each other, and already in September, Carl Eldhs Ateljémuseum’s visitor numbers had exceeded the previous year’s best from 2017.

– It has been a fantastic summer at Carl Eldhs Ateljémuseum, this oasis in the city of Stockholm, and we are happy that so many new visitors have found their way to us. With an exciting program, a critically acclaimed summer exhibition and recurring family days and sculpture walks, we have succeeded in making the studio visible to a wider, both Swedish and international audience. The summer’s success is also proof that the audience is there and that art’s ability to bring together, create dialogue, touch and illuminate, both our history and our times, is still strong, says Sara Bourke, museum director at Carl Eldhs Studio Museum.

Carl Eldh (1873–1954) was during the early 20th century one of Sweden’s most prominent sculptors. Today his former studio is a museum and a place for new artistic investigations. Among nearly five hundred of the artist’s casts and works, visitors can take part in newly produced exhibitions, screenings and programs. Carl Eldhs Ateljémuseum is located at the top of Bellevueparken in Stockholm, which is part of the Royal National City Park, in close proximity to Hagaparken. This year the museum turns 60 and just like Stockholm’s City Hall, which this year celebrates 100 years, Carl Eldh’s studio was designed by the architect Ragnar Östberg.

The Carl and Elise Eldhs Studio foundation has been granted support from the Swedish National Heritage Board and Region Stockholm for the project Brita’s archive.

The project aims to prepare a new archive for the material that Carl Eldh’s daughter and the studio museum’s founder, Brita Eldh, left behind. Thanks to the support, the museum can get an even better overview of its history and the work becomes an important basis for future exhibitions, programs and research.

Historiography and preservation have been thematized in several ways in the museum’s public activities in recent years. By inviting contemporary artists to investigate the museum, its collections, history and archives, we have asked questions about the ways history is created and preserved – about the use of history and the writing of history based on the place.

In the project Brita’s archive, Brita Eldh’s cultural heritage work in converting her father’s studio into a museum is examined. How did the business develop, how were the boundaries established between a home and a business, the private, the public and the professional? What events took place, what ways of communicating the arts and cultural heritage did she engage in? What cultural political strategies did she apply to even establish the museum?

It has now been more than 20 years since Brita Eldh passed away, and we are interested in preserving the museum’s institutional memory as those who worked closely with her in the 90s are no longer on the museum’s staff. Much of the material also relates to her father’s artistic work and will contribute new knowledge about Carl Eldh’s life and work. The project Brita’s archive is an important part of the museum’s exploration of its own genesis and history, in the work of carrying this rich cultural heritage forward into the future.

This year, Carl Eldhs Studio museum invites the artist Ingela Ihrman, internationally recognized for her large-scale sculptures and wayward, humorous performances. The exhibition mainly presents new and site-specific artworks that in a number of evocative scenes tell about something that once was, a daydream or the remains of a party?

Apricot-colored down and black-and-white feathers lie unrestrained among Eldh’s sculptures. The cactus Queen of the Night’s overflowing party gown and a ripe fig have been left in the banqueting hall. Here, visitors step into an unclear “afterwards”, traces of something wild and alive, which over time has dried up and become brittle.

Before the exhibition, the artist has approached Carl Eldh’s studio based on architect Ragnar Östberg’s intentions when he designed the building for his friend, a place for work and rest.

– The idea of the studio as a stable and a temple has been included throughout the process. I think it captures exactly what it’s like to work as an artist – a mix between mowing shit or standing in a dusty booth and eating oats day after day and at the same time being in touch with something sacred. A search for meaning, says Ingela Ihrman.

Carl Eldh’s studio was completed in 1919 with widely varying influences from the Roman round temple, Greek columns and an Old Norse guest hall. The tarred facade reflects the simple 18th-century farm next door – one of Stockholm’s oldest stables.

About the artist

Ingela Ihrman (b. 1985 in Kalmar) is based in Malmö but during the winter and spring of 2023 has been a visiting artist at Iaspis Konstnärsnämnden and based in a studio on Maria Skolgata in Stockholm. With a disarming humor and playfulness, Ingela Ihrman’s art has for the past decade responded to a need to think about questions concerning the future of humanity on earth. Through the work of the hand and the presence of time-consuming techniques, new meaning is created from often organic, recycled and everyday materials. Ingela Ihrman represented Sweden in the Nordic Pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2019. In 2023, she is also up for the solo exhibition Nocturne at Gasworks in London and will open a retrospective at Malmö Konsthall in September.

The exhibition is curated by Joanna Nordin and Caroline Malmström and is produced with the support of the Swedish Arts Council, the City of Stockholm and Pontus Bonnier.

Sara Bourke has been appointed as the new Museum Director of Carl Eldh Studio Museum. Sara comes closest from Bukowskis where she has been working as the PR & Brand Director since 2017. She will take on office March 1, 2023.

– It is with great commitment and enthusiasm that I take on the task of manage and develop Carl Eldh Studio Museum, this gem in Stockholms cultural life. It is a unique studio museum with most of Carl Eldh’s production that I look forward to making even more visible to both Swedish and international visitors. The museums vision to be a destination for contemporary art and Carl Eldh’s work will continue as well as new programs and curatorial collaborations, in order to broaden the perspectives and open the museum to more artistic expressions, says Sara Bourke.

At Bukowskis, Sara has initiated and carried out exhibitions, collaborations and public talks with artists, professors, writers, musicians and gallerists. Previous experience from the communications agency Patriksson Group includes several exhibition projects and close collaborations with, among others Prins Eugen’s Waldemarsudde, Sven-Harry’s Art Museum, Skissernas Museum and Market Art Fair. Sara has been a member of the board at Millesgården and has also been on the board of Carl Eldhs Studio Museum.

– The assignment includes managing and developing exhibitions and programs, attract new target groups and strengthen the economy. The required in addition to a strong interest in art, both entrepreneurial spirit and a developed sense of communication and business to achieve the museum’s ambitious goals. Sara’s broad experience from different business areas is of great value and we are very happy to welcome Sara as the new Museum Director, says Eva Schöld, Chairman of the Board.

Contact:
Eva Schöld, Chairman of the Board
076 145 04 57
Sara Bourke, takes office on 1 March
073 940 08 26