STOCKHOLM.- In preparation for the opening of the renovated museum, Nationalmuseum has established a working relationship with Joel Sanders Architect. The project includes designing display components such as display cases, podiums and benches, which will be needed when the museum returns to its permanent home. Joel Sanders himself will be visiting Stockholm and meeting with Nationalmuseum from 24 to 28 August.

During the spring, Nationalmuseum has invited exhibition architects to submit bids for an exhibition architect to create a comprehensive design program for exhibition room furnishing in the freshly renovated museum building. The choice fell on Joel Sanders, a professor at Yale University based in New York, and his firm Joel Sanders Architect (JSA). The project includes all the display components exhibition designers need to have: display cases, podiums, barriers, caption displays, free-standing wall systems, and benches, and is expected to be in place by year-end. The project is now under way, and Joel Sanders is visiting Stockholm this August to take part in a series of meetings and workshops. The Nationalmuseum museum building is estimated to reopen in 2018.

“The project raises a series of site-specific design challenges that tap into issues central to the future of the 21st century art museum. Our objective will be to work with Nationalmuseum to design a flexible family of display components that are compatible with but differentiate themselves from the varied historical interiors of the existing 19th century building, never confusing the distinction between old and new.”

JSA has experience working with museums and cultural institutions, including award-winning projects for arts and academic institutions as Yale University Art Gallery (YUAG), Jewish Museum (NYC), Princeton University, University of Virginia, and New York University (NYU). JSA has also designed three New York commercial galleries and collaborated with museum curators on exhibition designs at the YUAG, Jewish Museum and the Fashion Institute of Technology (NYC). Currently they work on the renovation and expansion of the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia