<p>I uppsatsen inventeras, kategoriseras och karaktäriseras den konstnärliga utsmyckningen vid Växjö universitetsbiblioteks nybyggda del. Uppsatsen visar också den process som ligger bakom inköp och placering av de konstverk som finns synliga för allmänheten. Genom intervjuer med inblandade personer och konststudering har tolkningar och jämförelser gjorts.</p><p>I uppsatsen jämförs olika tendenser inom samtidskonsten med den specifika konstsamlingen. Frågan om konstverken är representativa för samtidskonsten besvaras utifrån uppställda definitioner av tendenser inom samtidskonst. Uppsatsen visar bland annat att den specifika konstsamlingen representerar en estetiskt tilltalande konstsyn, där förståelse och anpassning går före provokation och motarbete.</p>

I uppsatsen inventeras, kategoriseras och karaktäriseras den konstnärliga utsmyckningen vid Växjö universitetsbiblioteks nybyggda del. Uppsatsen visar också den process som ligger bakom inköp och placering av de konstverk som finns synliga för allmänheten. Genom intervjuer med inblandade personer och konststudering har tolkningar och jämförelser gjorts. I uppsatsen jämförs olika tendenser inom samtidskonsten med den specifika konstsamlingen. Frågan om konstverken är representativa för samtidskonsten besvaras utifrån uppställda definitioner av tendenser inom samtidskonst. Uppsatsen visar bland annat att den specifika konstsamlingen representerar en estetiskt tilltalande konstsyn, där förståelse och anpassning går före provokation och motarbete.

Denna studie undersöker inköpen av offentlig konst i fyra kommuner (Botkyrka, Haninge, Järfälla och Solna) i Stockholms län under åren 2009-2011. Målet med undersökningen har varit att jämföra kommunernas inköp och att utifrån resultaten ställa frågan om hur den offentliga konstens praktik och placering förstås i kommunerna. Undersökningen har också ställt frågor om hur denna praktik ser ut i jämförelse med samtida diskussioner om hur offentlig konst kan och skall förstås. En kortare introduktion till enprocentregeln och hur den använts i Stockholms kommuner ges också i denna uppsats. Studien omfattar totalt 199 verk från dessa fyra kommuner inköpt under 2009-2011 och innehåller allt från textilcollage, grafisk konst som litografier och bronsskulpturer till verk som innehåller ”mänsklig aktivitet”. Som resultaten kom att visa så köpte kommunerna mer löskonst, i mer traditionell stil som målningar och litografier. Endast en kommun av de fyra hade köpt in konst som liknade den som förekommer i dagens diskussioner om offentlig konst. / This study examines the purchases of public art in four municipalities (Botkyrka, Haninge, Järfälla and Solna) in Stockholm County during the years 2009-2011. The objective of the study was to compare the municipalities' procurement and raise questions on the practice and position of public in these municipalities. The objective was also to compare these results with contemporary art debates on how public art can be understood today. This essay also gives a short introduction and history to the “one percent rule” and how it has been used, particularly in Stockholm County. The study includes a total of 199 pieces of art from these four municipalities purchased under 2009-2011. The purchased works of art consists of everything from textile collages, graphic art like lithography and bronze sculptures to art containing "human activity". The results of this study showed that these municipalities mainly bought more traditional art in the form of paintings and lithography, than “solid” art like sculptures. Only one of the municipalities had invested in art that reminded of the type of art that is discussed in today’s press.

In an effort to understand the formation of the artist’s role in society from the perspective of the artists in relation to the founding of the State Art Council (Statens konstråd) during the period 1936-1946, this thesis studies the formation process and central problems of the Swedish Artists’ Association (Konstnärernas riksorganisation, K.R.O.). Using the analytical concept of representation as a base for the methodological framework, the thesis explores material including meeting protocols, letters, transcribed debates and the union members’ journal Medlemsbladet, as well as several Swedish daily newspapers. While the role and importance of K.R.O. in the 1930s and 1940s have been treated parenthetically in most prior historical writing regarding the relationship between artists and the welfare state, this thesis argues that the first decade of K.R.O’s history can shed light on important themes in the historiography. It argues also that several common assumptions about the organization need to be reconsidered, including the notion that K.R.O. was constituted with the primary task of proposing candidates for the State Art Council. The need for an artists’ union had existed prior to the formation of the State Art Council, and K.R.O. should be regarded in light of a longer history of attempts to organise artists on a national level. These prior experiences informed the artists’ considerations about how representation, in the political sense of the concept, should and could be achieved for the organisation’s claims to legitimacy towards the state and the Swedish artists. Likewise, the legitimacy of the state’s initiative hinged on the success of the organization’s claims to representativity.                   By analysing two central problems connected to the state’s and other actors’ involvement in the Swedish cultural life and social reformist claims - wartime taxation of artworks and the system of art exhibitions -  this thesis argues that the commitment and enthusiasm regarding the changed structures within Swedish cultural life, which usually is ascribed to the artists during the period, has been inordinate. Whereas the state’s new involvement and the formation of K.R.O. can be seen as initiating the process of professionalizing the occupation of artist, the experiences of other actors not heeding their claims of expert knowledge during the organization’s first ten years highlighted the need for the artists to advance their social position.

New Genre Public Art was originally defined by Suzanne Lacy in 1991 as an activist approach to the public; it was a type of public art that was often created outside the institutional structure which brought the artist into direct engagement with the audience, while addressing social and political issues. In 1993, the public art exhibition ’Culture in Action’, curated by Mary Jane Jacob, marked a conceptual shift from static to dynamic public art. The exhibition is considered a landmark event in the development of public art as it was among the first projects to frame communities as the structure and content of its art.During the past decade (2010–2020), urban development has become incorporated as an integral part of the work of the Public Art Agency Sweden, and the agency have established their own curatorial department in order to curate and produce their own public art exhibitions. As Public Art Agency Sweden is a State agency, their work is largely determined by official policies formulated by the Swedish government. This thesis analyzes the contemporary policies of urban public art by conducting an interdisciplinary critical discourse analysis that merges art history, curatorial– and urban studies, in order to trace the influence of discourse to how Public Art Agency Sweden has operated within this intersection during the last decade––ultimately to discuss what the Swedish policies on public art strive to achieve and the risks, ethics and responsibilities of the emerging field of urban, context-based curatorship.

This thesis analyses the public art competitions arranged by the Public Art Agency Sweden (Statens konstråd) 1937-1970 and the discussions about public art competitions in within the art field of the 1940’s, -50’ and -60’s. The main material for this analysis has been the protocols of the Public Art Agency and the annual paper of the Swedish Artists' National Organization (Konstnärernas riksorganisation). The theoretical and methodological framework is based on Pierre Bourdieu’s understanding of the art field, and institutions as agents within that field. I also use Foucauldian discourse theory as another theoretical tool to understand the power relations between these institutions in the art field. My aim has been to understand why there were competitions for public art commissions – the purposes, the processes, the discussions and how these factors change over the decades. The purpose for public art competition can be understood through the ideology of the Swedish welfare state and the cultural policy of the Social Democratic government in the 1930’s. The public art competitions could support the Swedish artists economically, but was also a way for the Swedish Government, through the Public Art Agency, to control and guarantee that the public artworks were of high artistic quality. This idea of artistic quality became more and more dominant as a purpose for the competitions through the 1950’s and 1960’s.  The artists active in the Swedish Artists' National Organization found the competitions to be of great importance and the competitions were much discussed in the organisations annual paper. Many of the artists that discussed the artist competitions were of the same generation born in the 1910’s or 1920’s and were working with public art commissions to a great extent. For them, the public art competitions gave recognition and a possible income. My analysis also shows that the public art competitions were also connected to the concept of modernism. The status of the competitions changed along with the changing concept of modernism. The competition was at its highest status in the 1930’s and 1940’s, when many artists were engaged in public art commissions. It became less popular among young artists in the 1960’s, when the art field was more politically radical and critical against authorities.

The purpose of this essay has been to investigate the conditions for making the Swedish national public art collections available with the help of digitization. Together with the art owned by the state the municipalities' and regions' art holdings have also been added to the delimitation, and in addition, the interpretation of the concept of public art is made broad by including both traditional framed and easily moveable art together with building-related art. The art collection in the focus of the essay is thus managed in a decentralized structure which is examined with a survey and a case study. The survey provides quantitative data on the size of the art collection and the choice of system. The case study aims to highlight the importance of the organizational form and to describe how digital technology is used today to make art accessible.  A summation of the municipal, regional and state collections of public art amounts to approximately one million works of art. The survey also showed that there is a great deal of variation when it comes to the choice of administrative data system for inventorying and otherwise managing the public sector's art collections. In order to be able to draw conclusions based on the choice of collection systems, a taxonomy was developed where a total of 35 different systems were sorted into five different characteristics. The analysis showed that the large art collections get more appropriate systems than small art collections and that there are rational grounds for these choices.  The case study showed that there is a great deal of variation when it comes to titles and naming of organizational units. The staff who work with art in the case study's small to medium-sized municipalities often have many and widely different areas of responsibility. Among the regions of the case study, there are examples of art being managed by the property administration, but the most common is that the activity belongs to the cultural administration. In the case study, it is not possible to find any connection between organizational form and degree of accessibility. On the other hand, it is expressed that shared premises with a museum provide a richer professional context. The degree of accessibility in the case study is as low as 1% of the collection in most cases. The way that art is made available, via an individual municipality or region's website, or social media, makes it difficult to search widely for works of art owned by the Swedish public sector. This last observation also becomes an essential part of the conclusion that the conditions for making public art accessible via digitization exist, but it is not a work that seems to be progressing successfully today.

Denna undersökning kretsar kring att lyfta offentlig konst och medborgarinflytande. Teorier och tidigare forskning som lagts fram har skapat förståelse för hur konst är ett betydelsefullt verktyg i stadsmiljön, som kan användas för att förbättra människors upplevelse av en plats. Därför är det viktigt att man inkluderar individer i framtagandet av de konstnärliga verken. Denna inkludering har undersökts i uppsatsen genom fallstudier på tre specifika konstprojekt. Två av dessa projekt valdes för att en av författarna hade deltagit i dem och kunde återberätta sin upplevelse. Dessa projekt är Street Art och Närlunda Tunneln, som utfördes av Helsingborgs stad. Det tredje projektet var den statliga satsningen Konst händer av Statens konstråd. I de kommunala projekten hittades ingen dokumentation som utförligt beskrev process och resultat. Därav utfördes intervjuer med deltagare i respektive projekt. Gällande Konst händer däremot, hittades nyanserad dokumentation som redovisade projektets process och resultat. Resultatet av studien visade att alla tre projekt inkluderat civilsamhället på olika sätt. Individerna fick vara en del av gestaltningen i både Street Art och Närlunda Tunneln. Genom intervjuerna gick det även att konstatera hur de kommunala projekten fortfarande inspirerar deltagarna än idag. Däremot är det Konst händer som har inkluderat människor i störst utsträckning, genom att låta dem påverka projektet som helhet fram tills att resultaten var nådda. Den övergripande slutsatsen som dras är att de tre projekten lyckats förhålla sig till forskningen kring offentlig konst och deltagande. Förhoppningen med studien och dess resultat är att uppmuntra till ökad medborgarinflytande i framtidens konstprojekt. / This thesis serves to elevate public art and civic influence. Theories and previous research has created an understanding of how art is a meaningful tool in the urban environment, which can be used to improve people’s experience of a place. Therefore, it is important to include people in the production of these artistic works. This inclusion has been investigated in the thesis through case studies on three specific art projects. Two of these projects were chosen as one of the authors had participated in them and was able to recount her experience. These projects are Street Art and Närlunda Tunneln, which were carried out by the municipality of Helsingborg. The third project was the state initiative Konst händer by the public art agency of Sweden. In the municipal projects, no documentation was found that described the process and results in detail. For this reason, interviews were done with participants in the respective projects. On the other hand, nuanced documentation was found that reported the process and results of Konst händer. The results of the study prove that all three projects included civil society in different ways. Individuals were a part of the design of both Street Art and Närlunda Tunneln. Through the interviews, it was further possible to ascertain how the municipal projects still inspire the participants to this today. Although, it is Konst händer that has included civic engagement to the greatest extent, by letting the people influence the project as a whole until the results were reached. The overall conclusion that is drawn is that the three projects succeeded following the research regarding public art and participation. The ambition of this study and its results is to encourage greater citizen influence in future art projects.