Jessica Sjöholm Skrubbe Professor

I teach undergraduate, master, and graduate courses and supervise theses on all levels. I have had special responsibility for the undergraduate courses Art, Architecture and Visual culture in Sweden and Art History II and for the master course Gender Perspectives on Art and Visual Culture.

I was institutional partner of the CIVIS school Transitive Modernities/Modernisms in Transit, initiated by Anne Reynès-Delobel (Aix-Marseille University) and Stamatina Dimakopoulou (National and Kapodistrian University of Athens), and was a teacher at its first summer course for master and doctoral students Modernisms in Transit: Dialogues and Crossings (Aix-Marseille University, Aix-en-Provence) in 2021. I organised its second summer school Transitive Modernities: Mobilities, Mediations, Circulations(Stockholm University, June 2022) together with Andrea Kollnitz and participated in its third course module, the blended intensive programme In/transitive Modernities: Dis/continuities and Cultural Transformation, which took place online and on-site at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens during spring semester 2023. 

My research interests include the modern art world, art and feminism, art and transnationalism, public art, sculpture, and feminist historiography.

Current research

My current research project, Swedish artists en route. Mobility, transnationalism and artistic practices in the early 20th century, investigates artistic mobility in the early 20th century, resulting in the first study that thematically addresses transnational movements in Swedish modern art. It departs form the observation that the strong focus in Swedish art history on the pivotal artist journey to Paris serves as a reductive description of artists’ actual movements, practices and networks. Without questioning Paris as an artistic node, the project differentiates established narratives and restores the diversity of Swedish artistic mobility from a transnational perspective and offers a corrective to modernist art history’s concept of stylistic diffusion from centre to periphery. Informed by transdisciplinary theories on mobility, cultural transfer, and transnational historiography, it details on the diversity of artistic movements and historicises the meanings and politics of mobility through analyses of how it was visualised, narrativised and habitualised in artistic practices. The project comprises of case studies that focus on representative routes and destinations, represent different forms of transnational movements, and address the social power relations (e.g. gender, ethnicity, nationality) of artistic mobility. The project is funded by Vetenskapsrådet (Swedish Research Council).

Completed research projects

Nell Walden, Der Sturm, and the Collaborative Cultures of Modern Art (2017-2021)

Based on hitherto overlooked archival material, this research project studied Nell Walden’s significant impact on the Sturm organisation through a feminist reading of supportive labour that highlights the centrality of collaborative work within the modern art world. The results of the project are published in the monograph Nell Walden, Der Sturm and the Collaborative Cultures of Modern Art (Routledge, 2021). The book introduces Walden as an ardent collector of modernist and indigenous art and critically contextualises her own art production in relation to gendered ideas on abstraction and decoration. Visual analyses highlight how she collaborated with artists and experimental photographers during the Weimar era. Finally, the book provides an analysis of Walden’s continuing collaborative work as Der Sturm’s archivist and historiographer after her voluntary exile from Germany to Switzerland in the 1930s and thus highlights the importance of women’s supportive labour for the canonisation and institutionalisation of modern art in museums and archives. The project has been generously supported by Landskrona museum, Åke Wibergs Stiftelse, Magn. Bergvalls Stiftelse, and Stiftelsen Längmanska Kulturfonden.

Curating Differently (2013-2016)

The general objective of this international, collaborative project was to present scholarly analyses and critical reflections on the diverse practices of feminist art curating and exhibition practices from the 1970s onward. Two main questions formed the framework for the project: How can the diverse practices feminist art curating and feminist exhibitions be theorized and historicized? Which feminist theories and methodologies have informed the strategies of feminist art curating? The project resulted in the anthology Curating Differently: Feminisms, Exhibitions and Curatorial Spaces (2016), which brings together case studies from Australia, Israel, Europe, and North America that critically account for diverse strategies and interventions in curatorial space. The essays contribute with historical perspectives on feminist exhibition practices and curatorial models, first-hand accounts of feminist interventions within the art museum as well as timely analyses of current intersections of feminisms within curating in the contemporary global art world. As a major contribution to the ongoing scholarly debate on the institutionalization of feminisms in art and its relative success, or failure, Curating Differently provide new insights and provoke further discussion on the history and theory of feminist art exhibitions and curatorial spaces. The publication of the anthology Curating Differently was generously supported by the Lars Hierta Memorial Foundation.

Networked practices in Herwarth and Nell Walden's Der Sturm (2011-2015)

The project investigated Herwarth and Nell Walden’s Der Sturm as a cultural, social, and spatial network constituted by a broad spectrum of individuals as well as objects and practices. It showed that the networked structure of the organisation resists the neat categorisation of binary, gendered concepts such as private and public, personal and professional, art world and domestic life. In this context, Nell Walden clearly emerged as a main protagonist in Der Sturm together with her partner, the organisation’s founder Herwarth Walden (see J. Sjöholm Skrubbe, "Das Ehepaar Walden und die Vernetzungen des Sturm in Schweden", 2015; J. Sjöholm Skrubbe et al., Nell Walden & Der Sturm, 2015). The project’s focus on relational aspects not only rendered visible the cultural and social connections between individuals within the avant-garde, but also highlighted how diverse practices of dissemination (e.g. collecting, exhibiting, mediating, marketing) and different types of visual objects (artwork, photographs, postcards, et cetera) operated as significant actors in a pan-European network (see J. Sjöholm Skrubbe, "Modernism Diffracted: Picture Postcards from The Sturm Gallery and Walden Collection in Berlin", 2013. As such, the project also highlighted how the avant-garde’s transnational network runs counter to established traditions of writing national art history. The project was generousely supported by the Swedish Research Council, Magnus Bergvalls Stiftelse, and Åke Wibergs Stiftelse.