In the autumn of 2025, the think tanks Timbro and Oikos presented a proposal for a joint liberal-conservative reform agenda for Sweden under the title Timbro 2.0. In itself, this is nothing remarkable in the run-up to an election year. But something made us at the Royal Institute of Art – Mejan – raise our eyebrows.
In the section on culture and civil society, the following formulation appears:
“The Royal Institute of Art will be recast. The Royal Institute of Art will be transformed into Sweden’s central educational institution for classical art and architecture.”
Interesting – not least in light of the fact that the introduction to the reform agenda contains a strong defense of freedom, described as an “inalienable right.”
Few places cultivate freedom as consistently as fine art education. Artistic freedom is, in fact, the very essence of a liberal worldview, just as academic freedom is fundamental to the entire education and research sector. Why, then, should the Royal Institute of Art be “recast”?
What is meant by “classical art” is not made clear. However, there is a linguistic clue in the word “recast,” which evokes associations with casting – perhaps in bronze. We currently offer a bronze course for students, and it is popular. However, we closed our own bronze foundry five years ago for financial reasons. We lacked both the resources and the space required for the working environment such an operation demands, as our premises have become increasingly constrained.
The purpose of the bronze course, however, is not to teach “classical art,” but to provide interested students with knowledge of a material they may choose to work with in the future.
Another interpretation is that there is a desire to return to a classical concept of art. As an art historian, I can only understand this as a return to the classicist tradition that characterized the 19th century – a tradition that was already being constantly questioned by artists in its own time. From the French realists and impressionists, such as Édouard Manet and Claude Monet, to Swedish artists educated at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts, who in the 1880s openly opposed its educational ideals.
These were not insignificant names. Carl Larsson, Anders Zorn, Ernst Josephson, and Karl Nordström were among those who formed the group known as the Opponents and who, in 1886, founded the Artists’ Association in protest against the Royal Academy’s classical instruction.
That same year, Ernst Josephson wrote in a debate article:
“The true artist’s endeavor should be to interpret nature, create freely and independently, liberate the senses, and reflect the times. But academic art education in the Kingdom of Sweden worked against these worthy aims.”
(“From the Banks of the Seine,” Dagens Nyheter, 1886)
Today, these artists may be perceived as “classical,” but in their own time they were driven by a strong longing for independence and freedom. They became major innovators of art in Sweden and laid the foundation for the modernist and democratic worldview upon which contemporary art today also rests.
The freedom to create is today a fundamental starting point for teaching at the Royal Institute of Art. This is made possible through students’ freedom of choice in workshops, individual supervision, and a diversity of teaching formats.
As a higher education institution, we are also part of a system in which academic freedom – and in our case, artistic freedom as well – is a fundamental prerequisite for the institution’s legitimacy and existence in a democratic society. To “recast” the Royal Institute of Art would not only mean a return to a worldview belonging to the 1880s, but also a break with the liberal idea of artistic freedom and with the principle of academic freedom, which still constitutes a core value in the Swedish higher education and university sector.
If the Royal Institute of Art is recast, then artistic freedom itself is recast as well.
Sanne Kofod Olsen
January 2026