Art under pressure – on power, culture and the limits of democracy
A talk on the role of art in democracy organised by Expo and Accelerator. The event is part of Accelerator’s Art + Research programme.
It has been suggested that The Royal Institute of Art should become a school for classical art. The principle of an ‘arm’s-length distance’ is increasingly being challenged as politicians seek to influence the content and direction of art and culture. And at a time when images and image production play a crucial role in public debate, the question of the position of art in democracy is central.
Why have art, art education and cultural policy become such charged issues ahead of the upcoming election? What happens when politicians want to dictate what art is allowed to be – and who it is allowed to speak to? What does it actually mean to say that art shapes emotions? And who gets to define which culture is considered to represent Sweden?
Expo and Accelerator welcome you to a talk with Magdalena Malm, General Secretary of Bildkonst Sverige, Sanne Kofod Olsen, Principal of the Royal Institute of Art, The conversation will be moderated by Nina Beckmann, Director of Grafikens Hus, and Macarena Dusant, Process Leader and Curator (2022-2026) at Grafikens Hus.
Accelerator Café
Wednesday, 10 June
18:30–20:00
Language: Swedish
Free admission – registration required
Participants
Magdalena Malm is the General Secretary of Bildkonst Sverige. Malm is an art curator by training, has served as Director of the Swedish Arts Council, and is the founder of the independent arts organisation Mobile Art Production.
Sanne Kofod Olsen is the principal of the Royal Institute of Art in Stockholm and has previously served as dean of the Faculty of Arts at the University of Gothenburg and rector of the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts’ Schools of Visual Arts & Kunsthal Charlottenborg in Copenhagen; she has also been director of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Roskilde and rector of the Funen Art Academy in Odense. She is serving as chair of the board of the New Carlsberg Foundation since 2025 and at Overgaden – Institute for Contemporary Art. Kofod Olsen is also the author of numerous articles with a particular focus on feminist art, performance, and conceptual art practices, and has curated several exhibitions within the same subject area.
Daniel Poohl is the CEO and Editor-in-Chief of the Expo Foundation. He trained as a journalist at Värnpliktsnytt and subsequently began freelancing for Expo before being appointed Editor-in-Chief in 2006. Since 2019, he has been the CEO, responsible for Expo’s research work and monitoring of current affairs. Daniel is frequently engaged as a speaker and trains organisations and companies on how to understand and counter racist and anti-democratic movements. He has also written several books on Swedish right-wing extremism and published a novel.
Nina Beckmann has been Director of Grafikens Hus since 2012 and has led the development of an art museum founded by artists thirty years ago. She has strengthened the institution’s artistic profile and, through her dedicated educational work, has inspired a greater understanding and knowledge of art, driven by the conviction that art plays a crucial role in society and should be accessible to more people. In 2024, she received the Dynamo Grant from the Swedish Visual Arts Fund for her work in creating new venues for contemporary art. She sits on the board of Bonniers Konsthall, the Swedish Association for Art and the Cultural Fund for Sweden and Finland.
Macarena Dusant is an independent art historian, curator and writer. She is interested in power structures, the public sphere and the conditions of migration within the field of contemporary art. She has worked with and run several editorial and artistic platforms and organisations. Over the years, Dusant has produced several investigative and critical projects. For Grafikens Hus, she has worked as a process leader and curator on two major projects addressing collection practices and institutional structures from an intersectional and postcolonial perspective: Samlande tankar/Collecting Thoughts and Husera omtänkande i samlingar.
