More money for Moderna?

The director of Moderna, Lars Nittve, is now asking for 50 million Swedish kronors (about 7-8 million dollars) in extra funding from the government. The money is to be used to buy art made by modern female artists, like Frida Kahlo, Joan Mitchell and Eva Hesse (here’s the entire wish list).

The initial response from the Ministry of Culture and Education has been vaguely positive to the effort from the museum to make a more complete collection, though carefully avoiding to promise any money.

Some criticism has come from a feminist direction about the fact that Moderna’s collections in their entirety is worth nearly one billion kronors and that it would be more proper to "sell off some surplus male art" and make use of that money instead of asking for more funds. The wittiest of the daily news culture commentators, at Aftonbladet, claims to be "…fine with that. Just don’t sell the goat." – referring to Rauschenberg’s Monogram.