Moderna Museet

Listen first. On this small island, the city noise drops away. You hear gulls, the slap of water against stone quays, and the crunch of gravel under your shoes. Pine and birch trees line the paths. Across the water, the copper roofs and church spires of Gamla stan, the old town, rise in tones of ochre and rust. You are standing on Skeppsholmen, a short walk over the bridge from the old town. Here, in a long, low building, Sweden keeps one of Europe's most daring collections of modern art.

This island once belonged to the navy. For centuries, sailors drilled here and ships were fitted out along the shore. You can still see that past around you. There are old barracks, a naval church, and sturdy brick and timber buildings set among the trees. When Moderna Museet opened in 1958, it moved into a former naval drill hall. It was a plain, practical space, far from a palace of art. That modest start fits the museum's spirit. It has always preferred ideas over grandeur.

In its early decades, the museum earned a reputation that surprised people far beyond Sweden. Under Pontus Hultén, one of its first leading directors, Stockholm became a place where artists could try things they could not try elsewhere. Exhibitions here felt more like experiments than displays. Visitors were invited to touch, to walk inside, to take part. For a while, people in the art world talked about this small northern capital in the same breath as Paris and New York.

Here is a story many visitors never hear. In 1966, the museum built a giant sculpture of a reclining woman, made by Niki de Saint Phalle, Jean Tinguely and Per Olof Ultvedt. It was called simply Hon, which means She in Swedish. Visitors entered through a doorway between her legs. Inside there were rooms, a small cinema, and even a bar. The sculpture was taken apart after the show closed. Still, it remains one of the most talked-about moments in the history of modern art exhibitions.

Two years later, in 1968, the museum held a major exhibition of Andy Warhol, the American artist of soup cans and silkscreen portraits. The catalogue for that show is often credited with the first printed version of a famous line about everyone being world famous for fifteen minutes. Whatever its exact origin, the phrase travelled far beyond this island. It is a strange thought — that one of the best-known sayings of the media age may have been printed here, beside the Baltic.

The building you see today is newer. It was designed by the Spanish architect Rafael Moneo and opened in 1998. Look at how it sits on the land. It does not tower over the island. Instead, it stretches out low, in a series of connected volumes with pyramid-shaped skylights on the roof. Moneo wanted the building to respect the old naval structures around it. From a distance, it almost blends into the slope and the trees.

Inside, the light is the first thing you notice. The skylights let in soft daylight from above, which suits the long Swedish summer evenings and the pale winter afternoons. The galleries are calm and simple, with clean walls and wooden floors. Nothing competes with the art. A few years after opening, the building had to close for repairs because of damp problems. It later reopened, and today it shares its home with ArkDes, Sweden's national centre for architecture and design.

Now to the collection itself. It covers art from the early twentieth century to the present. You can find works by Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse and Salvador Dalí, alongside Swedish and Nordic artists who are less known abroad. One work often stops people in their tracks. It is Monogram, by the American artist Robert Rauschenberg. It is a stuffed angora goat with a car tyre around its middle, standing on a painted platform. It is funny, puzzling and a little unsettling, all at once.

The museum also keeps important pieces connected to Marcel Duchamp, the French artist who argued that an ordinary object could become art if an artist chose it. That idea changed the twentieth century. Here, you can follow its effects from room to room. Painting gives way to objects, objects give way to installations, and installations give way to film and photography. The collection is shown in changing arrangements, so the works on display may not be the same on every visit.

Before you go inside, or after you come out, walk around the grounds. Near the museum stands a group of brightly coloured sculptures by Niki de Saint Phalle and Jean Tinguely, the same pair behind Hon. Her figures are round, joyful and painted in strong primary colours. His are made of dark, welded machine parts. Together they form a playful garden. Children often run between them, and adults tend to slow down and smile. It is art you meet in the open air, with the sea behind it.

It is worth remembering that Moderna Museet is a national museum, and it has a second home in Malmö, in the south of Sweden. But this Stockholm building is the heart of it. Many Swedes grew up visiting it on school trips. For them, the goat with the tyre is almost a childhood friend. The museum is part of how the country thinks about itself — open to new ideas, a little playful, and willing to take art seriously without being solemn about it.

If you have time, pause at the museum café or restaurant, where large windows look out toward the water. On a clear day, you can watch ferries crossing the harbour and boats moving toward the archipelago, the thousands of islands that spread east from Stockholm. That view is part of the experience. It reminds you that this museum sits on an island, in a city built across islands. Art and water are never far apart here.

As you leave, walk slowly back toward the bridge. Notice how the low roofline of the museum disappears behind the trees. Listen again for the gulls and the water. Ahead of you, the old town rises across the channel, its spires catching the light. You have just walked from the twentieth century back into the medieval city... in only a few minutes. Carry one image with you — perhaps a colour, a shape, or a goat with a tyre — as the island quietly falls behind you.