The artistic residency at the Gotland Museum received Swedish and international artists with a keen interest in heritage, historic cultural environments and historiography to explore, research and visualize heritage anew from an artistic point of view. We also took advantage of the non-profit organisations of Gotland’s great interest in heritage to create an interdisciplinary platform for art and heritage, grounded in the local community.

In this context, artistic research meant that the invited artists used their individual artistic practices, as well as current debates in the field of contemporary art and similar disciplines to explore and contextualize the collections and the historic buildings in the museum collection.

The collections of the Gotland Museum contain approximately 500 000 objects which gave an incredible depth to the project. The artists was given access to the specialists of the museum, collections and the historic environments connected to these. The artistic research was then made accessible in different ways: through public events, exhibitions or publications depending on the form of the research.

By letting contemporary art meet the regional heritage, the artistic residency contributed to new and innovative ways of seeing cultural heritage. The encounter between art and heritage means that heritage isn’t just a part of the past but also something that can be used to understand, influence and to interact with our present day.