Maria Perers (MA 2004, MPhil 2009) is a BGC PhD candidate completing her dissertation “Inside the Ideal Home: Changing Values in the Politics and Design of Apartment Living in Sweden c. 1955-1995.” A native of Avesta, Sweden, she received her undergraduate degree from Uppsala University. Since 2009, she has been a curator at Nordiska museet (The Nordic Museum), Sweden’s national museum of cultural history in Stockholm.
What attracted you to the BGC program?
After three years working for UNESCO in Paris and Bangkok, my contract ended and I wanted to pursue a master’s degree in the United States. Peterson’s Guide to Graduate Schools led me to the BGC, which was exactly what I was looking for, and I was privileged to receive a Fulbright grant.
Historic preservation related to my work with UNESCO World Heritage, but suddenly it struck me that “I am a museum person!” I had loved working as a museum docent and with exhibitions before I left for Paris, and a short course in decorative arts and design had sparked my interest when I studied art history as an undergraduate. Of course paintings relate to society, but not like the stuff around us. All objects tell a story— not only about the people who produced, used, and admired them, but also about political, social, economic, and technological developments. I still remember how I talked about that in my BGC application and in my interview.
What was your focus of study here, how did you find yourself involved with it?
A class I still bear with me from my first semester fifteen years ago was an eye-opening seminar on “Technology and the Making of the Modern World” with visiting professor Susan Strasser. I sometimes lecture about Taylorism and mass production, and rationally planned, standardized kitchens are part of my dissertation. I especially enjoyed the way Amy Ogata linked politics and design in her classes, as in her World’s Fairs course. I used that perspective in my thesis on the Swedish Modernist designer and propagandist G.A. Berg, who participated in the 1939 New York World’s Fair. Juliet Kinchin and Paul Stirton helped me discover advice literature as a source, and Rosemarie Haag Bletter, from whom I took a course at CUNY, led me to the popular magazine, a primary source I also use in my dissertation.
It was indeed a privilege to be immersed in such exciting interdisciplinary studies, and I happily remember crazy nights when I was up all night finishing papers and all the late nights in the little PhD reading room studying for my field exams.
Describe your current position?
I am the curator of folk art at Nordiska museet. When I started there four years ago, I plunged into a project about plastics, followed by an exhibition on garbage – perhaps puzzling my predecessor about what happened to his fine folk art position. My next major project was an exhibition on the Swedish sloyd, a form of craft instruction that is compulsory in our educational system. My mother came up with the idea. I should have realized that she knew this topic would interest people, as every Swede has experienced it with pain or joy in school since the 1880s. For months, people were calling and writing to tell me their stories of sloyd. I received almost a thousand objects they had made, which were all exhibited! I have also curated a new installation of contemporary, popular crafts, such as yarn graffiti, craftivism (social activism pursued through craft practices, including knitting), and amigurumi (Japanese crocheted creatures).
It is my broad background from the BGC that has given me the privilege to form my job. Actually, the word “design” is now included in my job description. I have used my field exams in European decorative arts and design 1600-2000 to give courses at the museum, and I teach a course on material culture in collaboration with Konstfack, University College of Arts, Crafts, and Design. At the BGC, I wrote a ten-page paper for Catherine Whalen just about my lipstick, using Jules Prown’s methods of artifact analysis, and I still use that experience in my teaching. I also lecture at the Carl Malmsten Furniture Studies/Linköping University and a few other Swedish colleges, as well as Parsons and Cooper-Hewitt.
My research for my dissertation has been useful in writing about the living room in the museum’s book series on the rooms of The People’s Home, a political concept of the Swedish welfare state, and the museum’s annual Fataburen. I participated in the launch of the sixtieth anniversary edition of the Ikea catalog using research for my dissertation and Amy Ogata’s postmodernism class. My studies at the BGC are constantly with me.
