The 2023 guest researchers at ArkDes present their projects

Every year, ArkDes welcomes guest researchers who delve into the museum’s collection. The significance of industrial communities for the Swedish welfare state and the prominent exhibition designer Susanne Tucker are the subjects studied by the 2023 guest researchers.

The guest researchers at ArkDes are concluding their stay at the museum in the coming days. Elisa López and Marisa Cortright began their work in August 2023 and have deepened their understanding of the collections over the past six months.

Marisa Cortright, an architectural and urban planning historian, has examined how female architects have advanced in the profession over the past century. The research focuses on female representation in the collections and continues the work started by visiting researcher Frida Nerdal in the fall of 2021. Cortright has primarily studied Susanne Tucker’s collection, which contains over 70 different exhibitions for Svensk Form from the 1950s to the 1980s. Susanne Tucker’s professional career as an exhibition designer began at the Modern Museum of Art in New York. She later worked for the furniture company Knoll and continued her career in Sweden at NK Möbler.

Elisa López is an anthropologist and earned her PhD from Uppsala University in 2021. Her investigations in the collections have contributed to a deeper understanding of the establishment of industrial communities throughout Sweden during the 20th century. The research highlights the role of industrial communities in the development of the welfare state, a question that was illustrated in the ArkDes exhibition Kiruna Forever in 2020. In the ArkDes collection, there are both well-known architects like Ralph Erskine, who designed worker housing in Jädraås, Ockelbo, and lesser-known architects like Henry Fraenkel and his work for Cloetta in Ljungsbro, Linköping.