Makten över museet : en studie av relationen mellan lokal kulturpolitik och Malmö Museer

Sammanfattning: In 2016, a much-noted museum debate took place in Swedish media in which some critics accused the government of politicizing its public museums and using them as propaganda tools by detail managing them. These are serious accusations which motivate a thorough review of the relation between cultural politics and museums. With the aim of investigating politicization of public museums, Malmö Museum is a relevant case since the city of Malmö claims to work according to a culture strategy. This case study examines local cultural policy and its relation to Malmö Museum from 1976 to 2016. The aim of our thesis is to investigate if there has been a change in the political governing of Malmö Museum during this period. With the theoretical framework from political science we investigate the relation using a power analysis model. We analyze the power within the institution by asking questions regarding participation, rules and resources. We then compare our results with the norm of arm’s length principle in order to make out eventual discrepancies. We examine the complex meaning of arm’s length principle by applying different perspectives on “length”. We also use a figure for value analysis of the development of local cultural policy and the museum’s assignment over time. Our conclusion is that Malmö Museum was under more political control before the 1990’s and has become more normative in regard of the arm’s length principle in the last decades. The analysis of political values and the museum’s assignment show that it has become more society orientated with instrumental and monumental values in 2016 compared to earlier when antiquarian and monumental values were prominent. Our thesis show the complex meaning of politicization and arm’s length principle, that an increased distance can be understood as the museum becomes more of an extended arm of local politics than working on arm’s length.