For today’s episode, we are live and in-person with Azmara Nigusse at her workplace, the Hallwyl Museum in Stockholm! We talk about the challenges of modernizing museums and reckoning with their colonial pasts, what it takes to actually open up these spaces for people of color (both visitors and long-term workers), running from swans, and why the spa is one of her non-negotiables.

Azmara Nigusse is a program curator and museum educator at the Hallwyll Museum in central Stockholm. The collection here is vast and varied, and was donated by the von Hallwyll family to the Swedish government in 1930, at which point the 120+ year old private palatial mansion turned into a national museum. 

Like many museums, their collection is inextricably tied to colonialism (and all the -isms that come with that), but over the years, Azmara and her colleagues have been working to create programs and changes that both address this history and make the space more relevant and open to more of the public—including people of color. Azmara works mainly with creating programmes, events and collaborations at the museum as well as hosting guided tours.

Azmara also sits on the boards of the associations Gender in Museums and the Swedish Society for Museum Education, and in the working group for Afro-Swedish History Week. She is also a local project partner in Sweden for the Nordic Network of Norm Critical Leadership and a union rep. 

If you’d like to find out more about the Hallwyl Museum, you can visit their website at www.hallwyllskamuseet.se. 

And if you want to read more about Azmara’s work, I can recommend another interview of hers with MagasinK.se from November 30, 2022.

You can listen also to Azmara on episode 43 of the museum’s own podcast, Hallwylska Podden!

Earlier in the episode, we also mention fellow Konst Detox member Nicol Savinetti, who founded/runs ARTIVAL, a multilingual culture festival in the Nordic region, as part of IMMART.