Modern Museum head calls for funds to buy works

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Stockholm (dpa) - The head of the Modern Museum in Sweden called for extra funding Tuesday to buy more art by contemporary female artists.

Lars Nittve suggested that the government approves a one-time allowance of 50 million kronor (6.5 million dollars) to rectify the gender representation.

Owing to "historic reasons" and "routine priorities", some 90 per cent of the museum's works are by men, Nittve said in an op-ed article in the Dagens Nyheter newspaper.

In 2008, the museum was slated to celebrate its 50th anniversary and the occasion was a good opportunity to rectify the imbalance, he said.

"Not only are groundbreaking women missing, those that are represented are often, unlike the men, represented with less important, somewhat peripheral works," Nittve said.

Russian avantgarde artists like Lubov Popova or Varvara Stepanova - or the lesser known Polish artist Katarzyna Kobro could be added to the museum's collections, Nittve said.

"In the expressionist room, paintings by Nolde, Kirchner and Munch would get new, and different energy in a meeting with a women portrait by Paula Modersohn-Becker," he added.

The museum, which attracts some 600,000 visitors a year, is housed on one of Stockholm's downtown islands. It was inaugurated in February 1998 by King Carl XVI Gustaf and Queen Silvia.