In the context of New Museology and the breakthrough of smartphones, many museums tend to develop museum-related mobile applications to support the museum visit and facilitate the overall visitor experience. This qualitative case study explores how the context of museum visit frames the experience of usage of smartphone applications, and thus identifies the factors that influence the visitor’s experience of using museum-related smartphone applications. The mobile application of Nationalmuseum in Stockholm is selected as the bounded case for this study. Applying the four contexts for the museum visit as the theoretical framework, this study aims to answer the research questions about how the personal context, the sociocultural context, the physical context, and the digital context affect the visitor’s experience of using the application, and what factors can be identified in this process. As it is a case study with a qualitative perspective, the data is collected through multiple sources, including the interview data and the observation field notes as the primary sources, and some statistical data and visitor feedback survey offered by the museum as the secondary sources. But most of the analysis is based on the one-on-one interviews with twelve visitors. Using the four contexts for the museum visit as the framework, the study conducts the analysis of the data in accordance with the distinct aspects of the four contexts, and thus identifies the factors that affect the visitor’s experience of using the museum application in relation to the four contexts. The findings of this study indicate that the visitor’s experience of using the application is complicated, which can be affected by multiple factors in relation to the four contexts for the museum visit. The personal context and the sociocultural context are proved to be closely related to the visitor’s initial motivation for using museum-related applications. Meanwhile, it can be observed that the physical and the digital contexts affect how visitors perceive the content offered by museum-related mobile applications. Besides, previous research on visitor type of application users is examined by using the findings of this study and thus proved to lack comprehensive considerations. By further discussing how the four contexts interact with each other and influence the visitor, the study tries to further comprehend the visitor’s experience in the process of using museum-related mobile applications. The outcomes of this study bring some insights into the visitor experience of using museum-related mobile applications, and thus contribute some empirical evidence to future research in this field. The four contexts for the museum visit are proved to be applicable for exploring this topic from the perspective of the visitors, and thus can be regarded as a lens for understanding the visitor experience of usage of museum applications. Based on the outcomes of the study, the author makes some recommendations about the future development of the Nationalmuseum application.

Sigrid Blomberg and the altarpiece in the church of Oskarshamn – a woman’s work of art, is an essay with the aim to describe, analyse and to discuss the gypsum altarpiece in the city church of Oskarshamn and its artist, the Swedish sculptor Sigrid Blomberg.  The essay begins with a brief historical description of the situation for female artists in Sweden at the turn of the 20th century and a comment on the material chosen for the altarpiece – gypsum. This is followed by a short summary of the life of Sigrid Blomberg and two other examples of her work to illustrate and discuss similarities with the altarpiece in the church of Oskarshamn.  This is followed by a description of the church and its interior, as well as the altarpiece’s history, creation process and problems. The essay then focuses on an analysis of the different parts, as well as the whole, of the altarpiece – characters, meanings and interpretations. The essay ends in a discussion of the findings and the author’s conclusions regarding the altarpiece and the artist’s place in the art history. Central in the essay is the apparent lack of female artists in the art canon and the reasons and effect due to this.  The author uses a semiotic method and a feminist theory premiss to find the answers to questions such as: why was a female artist chosen for the assignment; how does the artwork compare to other, equivalent and contemporary artworks; how may the placing of the work have effected the perception of the altarpiece; have the perception changed over time; and finally what’s characteristic for the artist Sigrid Blombergs idiom?

In comparison with the art production at Nurnberg or at the cities of the so-called Danube School at the end of 15th century stands the simultaneous painting at Munich in the background. Therefore is sometimes forgotten, that there, in this period, a painter Jan Polack with his workshop was active. To his important customers/patrons belonged the dukes Sigmund and Albrecht of Wittelsbach and the Bavarian monasteries (Weihenstephan near Feising), for which he made few altars or portraits. A most of these altars were after that removed from the original sacral areas and today they are presented in the Bavarian National-museum at Munich or in other galleries. Only a few altars, for example three altars for the chapel in Blutenburg near Munich, have been staying on the original place in this small chapel. These Master thesis would like to compare his most representative pictures in the context with the others paintings, which were created in the middle or at the end of the 15th century in Bavaria (circle of Hans Pleydenwurff, Wolfgang Katzheimer etc.). This comparison can help to find the sources of the Polacks artistic expression. A special attention should be devoted his cooperation with Mair of Landshut, because few pictures of Polacks altar from the church of St. Peter in Munich have just been to Mair inscribed. It is also important to point to same compositional connections between the altar-pictures of Jan Polack and the graphics (Master E. S., Martin Schongauer) One highly-valued contribution of this thesis could be a capitol about the possible inspiration of the Polacks artistic expression for the artists, who came from Bohemia and who have been working here for a long times, but who could gain their training in the Bavaria (Munich). At the literature (Jaroslav Pešina) was one opinion expressed, that an altar in a church in Chudenitz concludes the formal features, which reveal a connection to the art at Munich in the middle of the 15th century. However, other authors (Roman Lavička) think that the painted boards of an original altar of Doudleby were inspired by Polacks artistic expression, although any concrete related features were not in the literature mentioned. It is appropriate too, point to the several compositional connections between the pictures of Jan Polack und a so-called Master of an altar from Litoměřice. This anonymous Bohemian painter, who is knowed only according to his most important commission, would be supposed to study in the Bavaria (an artistic circle of Rueland Frueauf at Passau) at the end of the 15th century. It is possible, that he could visit Munich und he could be inspired by the Polacks paintings.