I need to make art to be able to understand my surroundings and to be able to interpret cultures and events. When I was small I had visited every country in Europe before the age of 16, in 1986 with my mother, except Poland, Finland and Norway. Before I was 5 we lived very far away from Europe, we lived very safely in military cantonments as my father was in the army like my grandfather before him, and we travelled to Sweden in the summer to my grandparents and I learnt culture and smelled different landscapes and tasted different dishes and languages. When I was small they read me Kipling and made Humpty Dumpty, and I was safe falling. This was my art, literature and my poetry I learnt, at cants preschool, my fantasy world was safe from war outside of the cantonments.
Later, when I visited countries, art museums and everything on the way to the museum, I learned to see similarities in countries and cultures but also differences. I met people and buildings in cities we visited and in the countryside, like Yugoslavia I remember well, the wonderful happy faces of the 80s, and I learned early that there was an Eastern and a Western Europe, and that here as a Swede I could travel freely with my Swedish passport. It was especially noticeable in Berlin, when we visited friends in the US Army, Berlin that is also in my Magical Museum Collections. I wanted to show my youngest son differences in Europe during Covid, how to deal with crises in different ways, in different countries, and from that idea my small project was born. I never want him to ever have to experience the closed Europe that I had to face, and in art we can all meet, then as now. It became like a respite for me then, and for him today, for all the ugly, ugly Eastern Europe I saw, as well as the ugly Moscow I saw, in 1991 on two occasions when the shelves were empty of food and the snow lay silently on the wide empty streets, the city where people froze to death on empty stomachs. Art was a respite for him during the Corona crisis when all children are forced to grow up and hear about this in school, on the news and everywhere. Magical Museum Collections are for all the children and adults who want a break, in a complex world. When you experience art, you train the ability to imagine things in reality, things you can use in any profession. When you experience art, you train your innovative and creative thinking and you raise serotonin levels. This can be especially good in times of crisis when reality is distorted for a while, not for long I hope.
Magical Museum Collections 