To understand the background to why Sundbyberg City Museum is being closed down, you can, if you’re up for it, read the City’s own 2018 report, "Utredning om Sundbybergs stads arbete för att tillgängliggöra stadens historia och kulturarv – Ett underlag för fortsatt dialog" ["Report on the City of Sundbyberg’s Work to Make the Town’s History and Cultural Heritage Accessible – A Basis for Continued Dialogue"]. It describes the background to the current situation.
When that report was carried out (after a great deal of pressure from the association), the museum was struggling. We contacted the City yet again, and in a meeting with the then-governing coalition were told that "we have to understand that the City doesn’t have money for investment in a museum".
That was very troubling for the association. We are, after all, responsible for collections gathered and cared for since 1934 through tens of thousands of hours of volunteer work. The collections also include generous gifts the association has received from other associations, organisations, and – not least – private individuals. All of this forms a central part of Sundbyberg’s cultural heritage, and the collections must be preserved.
With this in mind, we looked into what would happen if we dissolved the association. The agreement contains a clause specifically intended to protect the collections and cultural heritage. Under the association’s bylaws, a decision to dissolve must be made at two consecutive annual meetings to take legal effect.
At first, after a few meetings, the association felt there was some willingness to move toward a solution that would save the collections. But it eventually became clear that the City’s final offer/directive was that we hand over the collections with full discretion from 2025 onward, without any guarantees that the City would either care for them or make them accessible.
The association could not, of course, accept that, and after more than twenty years of talks we had given up hope of moving forward with the City in its current form.
That’s where things stand now, and we’re working hard to save what can be saved of the cultural heritage, even though we’ve currently paused our talks with the City. It’s summer, and we simply have to give ourselves the summer!
We wish you all a wonderful summer.
Editor’s note on migration: this post is reproduced in condensed form. The original also included named comments about individual officials/politicians, which we recommend the board review and consciously decide on before publishing them unchanged on www.museet.se – for legal and PR reasons, it may be wise to have a board member re-approve the full wording. The complete original text remains on your old site until you take it down.