Gothenburg Museum of Art
The art museum rises at the top of Götaplatsen, closing the vista of the Kungsportsavenyen. The broad façade of yellow brick with a tall arched portico is one of the most monumental works of Nordic Classicism. In front stands Carl Milles’s Poseidon.
Götaplatsen was laid out for Gothenburg’s Jubilee Exhibition of 1923, when the city celebrated its 300th anniversary. The art museum was built as the exhibition’s main building, in a simple but grand form in which classicism is reduced to proportions, arches and the weight of the wall. The architects Sigfrid Ericson and Arvid Bjerke also designed the exhibition’s other buildings.
The square was completed over the following decades: the City Theatre in 1934, the Concert Hall by Nils Einar Eriksson in 1935 and Milles’s Poseidon in 1931, whose nudity at first caused offence. The museum has been extended several times and today houses one of the finest collections in the Nordic countries of Nordic art from around the turn of the century. Götaplatsen shows how Nordic Classicism could shape an entire urban space.