Our last sightseeing destination in Stockholm was the city’s Museum of Modern Art (Moderna Museet). The museum is located on the island of Skeppsholmen, in the harbor between Gamla Stan (the Old Town) and Djurgården (island home to the Vasa Museum, among other attractions). We found a bus that took us most of the way to the museum, but a certain amount of walking proved necessary. And while we’d been blessed with pleasant weather in Stockholm up to this point, our luck deserted us for this last destination. There was still a month to go before the start of summer, so changeable weather was probably to be expected, and on this afternoon we were greeted by a temperature in the 40’s (Fahrenheit) with clouds, wind, and a little bit of rain. We crossed the bridge to Skeppsholmen hastily, noting that the view was probably lovely, and made our way to the museum without too much trouble.

The Museum of Modern Art was founded in 1958, and began with a collection of art from the early 20th Century and photography dating back to the early days of the art form. Since then, the collection has expanded, and a new building was completed (in 1998) to house it all. In 1993, there was a famous art theft from the museum, from what must have been the old building, in which six Picasso works and two by Georges Braque were taken (all of the Picassos and one of the Braques have since been recovered). On the main entrance side, the new building has "MODERNA MUSEET" scrawled across it, and appears to consist of a single floor, and this is essentially the case, if you’re only interested in viewing the permanent collection. But there is some space downstairs for temporary exhibitions, plus an auditorium and research areas. We stuck to the permanent collection.

The artists represented at the museum are largely a list of the usual suspects – artists whose work we’d seen at a number of other museums with displays of 20th Century art. But some of the artists were unfamiliar to us, and of course there was more Scandinavian representation than we'd seen in some of the other museums. I could go into detail on each artwork, but this would get wordy, and mostly I’d be making stuff up, so instead I’ll just present the following photos semi-chronologically, starting with the first two decades of the 20th Century:




A few iconic artists began their careers in the early 20th Century and went on to produce cutting-edge art for several decades. Two such artists with work on display in the Museum of Modern Art are Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso. Here are some of the Matisses and Picassos we found:





Here are some works from the 1920’s (more or less):



Taking a break from the art, here’s a nice view of Djurgården from the Museum of Modern Art:

The 1930’s didn’t seem to have been as well represented. One display was a collection of Soviet propaganda posters:

Here’s some of what was on display for the post-war years:


The 1960’s were pretty well represented:




Toward the end of the display area, there was a display that seemed to consist of a compressed assortment of artworks. Rather than attempting to untangle all of it, here are a couple of pictures:

On the way out, we passed a more contemporary display of an apparent fungus:

After finishing with the museum, we returned to our hotel and began packing. We would be flying home the following day. Dinnertime eventually presented itself, and we decided to return to the restaurant on Gamla Stan where we’d had lunch a few days earlier. We’d conducted a few experiments with the local cuisine and had generally been underwhelmed with the results. But we did like this one restaurant – Nella had tasted my herring, and wanted some herring of her own. We found a tram that had a stop near the restaurant, and were able to get seated. We ordered seafood.

Our travel day dawned ugly, and became rainy. We boarded the Arlanda Express at the train station and headed for the airport. We flew home uneventfully, with a brief stop in Newark (it was fine, really).

We immediately returned to our humdrum lives. Until early 2017, when we started to get the travel itch again. As usual, we weren’t sure at first what we wanted to do. But after numerous discussions, we settled on something that sounded awesome. And we began to plan…