The aim of this master’s thesis is to examine how social media, specifically Instagram, is utilized in three special collections libraries in Sweden. The intent is to understand why Instagram is a plausible platform for the purpose of showcasing the libraries’ cultural heritage collections, how this is done and who the target audience is. The theoretical framework for this study is based on Roland Barthes’s visual semiotic terms denotation and connotation. The study also applies Lorri Mon’s analytical tools when examining how libraries can use social media in a successful manner. The three selected libraries are Uppsala University Library, Lund University Library and Roggebiblioteket. Six Instagram posts, between October 2018 and Mars 2019, from each library are analyzed, and e-mail interviews have been conducted with the librarians behind the accounts. Finally, the results are compared to showcase their differences and similarities, but also to compare them to previous studies on social media use in libraries. The results show that Instagram is used to display the libraries’ cultural heritage and make the collections more approachable to the general public – specifically to foreign researchers. The librarians also use Instagram as a platform to connect with other cultural heritage institutions and librarians all over the world. Through publishing esthetically pleasing pictures of old historical books, maps and other materials, they want to attract new users and put their library on the map. This is a two years master’s thesis in Library and Information Science.

Uppsatsen behandlar konst och visuella kulturer inom den evangeliska brödraförsamlingen, eller herrnhutismen, i Västsverige ca 1740-1810. Porträtt, kyrkomålningar samt dekorationstryck har studerats. Stora delar av den herrnhutiska ideologin och estetiken importerades mellan församlingsgrupperna, och de västsvenska objekten är analyserade med hjälp av framförallt tyska exempel. Ett nyckelord är passager – passager mellan ljus och mörker, ord och kött, död och liv, inre och yttre – vilka gestaltades genom såret, mandorlan, blomman, ögat och stjärnan. En styrka i bildkonsten var just mångtydigheten i dessa religiösa symboler, då de tillät betraktaren att läsa in symboliska betydelser utifrån den egna kontexten.  Syftet är att diskutera och belysa herrnhutismen ur ett helhetsperspektiv gällande estetik, ideologi och social kontext, vilket harmonierar med hur de själva uppfattade livet: Inom ramen för det tidigmoderna allegoriska paradigmet såg man helheter och samband i det stora och i det lilla. Genom att studera objekten utifrån uppfattningen om att helheterna existerar har jag velat öppna upp för och möjliggöra en tolkning av dess visuella kulturer utifrån den kontext i vilken de själva verkade. Synsättet påminner mycket om dagens systemteori och uppsatsen diskuterar också dessa likheter utifrån begreppen grace och integration. / The aim of this study is to examine the symbolism in art objects and visual culture belonging to the Moravian Church in western Sweden during the 18th century. The objects chosen are portraits from Gothenburg, church art from the countryside, as well as printed decorations in books and church service agendas. The Moravian church is one part of a general transition from an early modern society, through Enlightenment, towards romantiscism and secularization. The Moravian church was also to a high degree an international movement. Therefore the objects analyzed here have been related to examples from the international Moravian church, as well as to local examples without any obvious association to the community. One aspect of the determinant ideology of the Moravian church was their view of how practical life, the religious ideology and estetic ideals together formed aspects of a whole. Life was not seen as fragmented in parts. Instead its different forms of expression were all regarded as ways for the Divine to express itself, as well as ways for the people to experience and approach the Divine, an approach that goes within the frame of ”Ordo Salutis”. This ability to experience life as a whole is also a scientific approach used in the present study to interpret their art and symbolism. The study shows how a number of symbols (the eye, the star, the wound, the mandorla and the flower) all are aspects aiming to point towards the one main transition – the one between light and dark, life and death.

The aim of this project is to investigate a cultural history of mushroom collecting in Sweden from the 19th century to the present with a focus on connections between aesthetics and the environment.  Collecting is defined broadly as gathering, storing, and accumulating.  This definition encompasses mycologists, mushroom enthusiasts, botanists, and natural historians documenting and preserving as many species as possible.  But it also includes collecting in the sense of leisurely mushroom collectors taking a part of the environment home with them to eat, store, or learn from. A history of mushroom collecting in Sweden is framed that does not only focus on edible mushrooms or scientific value, but emphasizes their linkages to place, memory, conservation, sociality, and embodied knowledge. Mushroom aesthetics are a starting point for exploring wider human connections to the environment and human perceptions of nature.   Collecting is presented as a process which is argued to be a means for constant dialogue with the environment. The cyclical collecting process is broken into stages that are discussed in designated chapters: Hunting, Identification and Assessment, and Storage and Sharing. Aesthetic aspects of mushroom collecting in Sweden are examined within these stages applying visual and discourse analyses to archival images, questionnaires, historic cookbook recipes, and mushroom identification books. Importance is also assigned to fully immersed aesthetic experiences and specific sensory stimuli that facilitate interconnection with non-human actors. Immersed aesthetic experiences are argued to be significant in their ability to democratize aesthetic appreciation of nature, in contrast to historical associations of aesthetics with taste and high culture. Fluctuating historical judgments are mapped about mushrooms, highlighting the framing of nature as a productive asset. Mushroom exhibitions are shown to be a point of collective meaning making, where aspects of natural time according to mushrooms challenge anthropocentric notions of temporality. This thesis through its focus on aesthetics in mushroom collecting reveals spaces of uncertainty and dynamic fluctuation in human-nature relationships, as well as a sense of value for being physically present and part of environments.

This essay investigates how the United States has been portrayed by Swedish artists in the 1960´s and 1970’s. The aim is to discover what signs and attributes these posters utilize and how these signs and attributes given to America is reflective of the culture and conception of America in Sweden during this time period. Firstly, using Mieke Bal and Norman Brysons semiotic methodology, presented in Semiotics and art history from 1991, to analyze the signs and connect them to the right contexts in each poster. Secondly, to identify reoccurring themes and conceptions about America, visual culture theory based on Nicholas Mirzoeffs An introduction to visual culture will be used.  In these posters USA is visualized in different ways, sometimes expressively with just the text “USA”, but most commonly through representative signs likes the American flag, presidents and pictures from Vietnam. USA is depicted as an imperialistic, capitalistic, militaristic nation with a double standard. The posters are created and contributes to a visual culture. And these negative signs are reflective of the Swedish culture and opinions about the United States that could be found during this time period. The political and social commentary in art is also reflective of the 1960´s and 1970´s Sweden and the changing landscape of the Swedish artworld.

Abstract The subject of the thesis concerns visual representations of the African diaspora in Swedish art history. The focus is on paintings by students at the Royal Swedish Academy for Fine Arts 1878–1903 for which the dockworker and artists’ model Pierre Louis Alexandre (1844–1902) posed. Twelve paintings are selected for visual analysis. Drawing on a theoretical framework provided by postcolonial studies and critical visual culture studies, the thesis investigates how Alexandre lent his body to visual types and representations, as well as how he himself emerges through these paintings. The thesis arrives at the following conclusions: Alexandre lent his body to several figures and representations constructed through contemporary orientalist ideas concerning race and the “Orient”. However, he can also be seen depicted as figures of the male worker in a modern Stockholm. Additionally, some of these images can be interpreted as the model himself emerging, thus enabling a claim to existence as an individual and subject, historical and visual. / Populärvetenskaplig sammanfattning Uppsatsen undersöker hur Pierre Louis Alexandre (1844–1905), levande modell och hamnarbetare med afrikanskt ursprung, framställdes i elevarbeten skapade på Konstakademien mellan 1878–1903. Med hjälp av postkoloniala studier och kritiska visuella kulturstudier samt konstvetenskapliga metoder för bildanalys undersöks tolv målningar som han poserade för. De frågor som ställs inför verken berör hur Alexandre lånade sin kropp till visuella representationer och typer, samt även hur han själv framträder genom målningarna. Målningarnas visuella innehåll och produktionssammanhang analyseras i relation till verkens och modellens samtida kontext, utifrån konsthistoriska perspektiv rörande konstakademiska ideal, och idéer kring ras, genus och klass. Resultatet visar att flera av de figurer modellen lånade sin kropp till konstruerades enligt samtida orientalistiska idéer kring ras och ”Orienten”. Dock så kan flera av verken istället ses skildra arbetaren som figur i ett samtida Stockholm. Slutligen kan Alexandre själv tolkas framträda genom verken, vilket möjliggör ett anspråk på historisk och visuell existens som individ och subjekt.

Föreliggande studie syftar till att söka ökad kunskap och förståelse för bildämnets möjligheter att stärka Skolverkets uppdrag och mål att utveckla adekvat digital kompetens hos elever, samt synliggöra hur bildlärare arbetar med att utveckla och stärka elevers digitala kompetens utifrån olika aspekter av medie- och informationskunnighet. För att få ett så nyanserat och varierat resultat som möjligt användes en kvalitativ metod, närmare bestämt semi-strukturerade intervjuer och en öppen enkätundersökning. Ett total av fem intervjuer genomfördes med verksamma bildlärare i olika delar av Sverige samt en fokusgruppsintervju med elever på en skola. Enkätundersökningen genererade 20 svar från elever. Det empiriska materialet analyserades med hjälp av två teorier: (i) artefaktsteori och (ii) läroplansteori. Resultatet illustrerar att lärare besitter varierande kunskapsnivåer och att olika kunskaper ger konsekvenser för vilket lärande som ges företräde. Vidare illustrerar resultatet att lärare och elever har olika inställningar om vilket lärande som bildämnet ämnar generera. Resultatet visar även att bildämnet har många möjligheter till att utveckla elevers digitala kompetens, men att det krävs fortbildning för att genomföra ett sådant arbete. / The present study aims to seek increased knowledge and understanding of the possibilities that the art subject has to strengthen the Swedish National Agency for Education´s goals and mission to develop students’ digital competence. Furthermore, to understand how art teachers work to foster and strengthen student digital competence from different aspects of media- and information literacy. A qualitative method was used, more precisely semi-structured interviews and a survey, to attain a wide variety of varied and nuanced results. A total of five interviews were conducted with working art teachers in Sweden and one focus group interview with students at a school. The survey resulted in 20 answers from students. The empirical material was analysed using two theories: artefacts theory and curriculum theory. The results illustrated that teachers have a varied knowledge, and that the variation has an impact on what students learn. The result also shows that students and teachers have a difference in attitudes about what the subject aims to teach students. Finally, that the art subject has a lot of possibilities to foster students’ digital competence, but it takes a lot further training to enable it.