The artistic residency at the Gotland Museum will receive 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 would also like to take 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 means that the invited artists will use 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 give an incredible depth to the project. The artists will be given access to the specialists of the museum, collections and the historic environments connected to these. The artistic research can be 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 will contribute 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.