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TITLE: Living and Building Between Tradition and Change: Vernacular Architecture in Northern Sweden
SPEAKER: Mats Widbom
EVENT DATE: 03/24/2009
FORMAT: Video + Captions
RUNNING TIME: 58 minutes
TRANSCRIPT: View Transcript (link will open in a new window)
DESCRIPTION:
Architect and folklorist Mats Widbom presented his research on the traditional building culture of Dalecarlia in Northern Sweden. In particular, he explored how the parstuga (double house) has been used and rebuilt over time in the parish of Lima. His research demonstrates that traditional culture, as expressed in architecture, is not something permanent; it need not have a particular appearance and derivation from the past. Rather, he contends, tradition is something that is constantly being reinterpreted and re-created in the present, in dynamic oscillation between continuity and change.
Speaker Biography: Mats Widbom came to the Embassy of Sweden in September 2006 from the governmental authority Swedish Travelling Exhibitions, where he served as head of exhibitions, acting director general and artistic director. He holds a master's degree in architecture from the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm and has also studied at the Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies in New York. He produced and was the project leader for the successful exhibition "Swedish Folk Art - All Tradition is Change," which toured for more than four years throughout the United States and Canada. From 1998 to 2004, he was president of the Swedish National Committee of the International Council of Museums (ICOM) and a board member of the International Committee for Exhibitions and Exchange (ICEE) 2001-2006.
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SERIES: Benjamin Botkin Lecture Series