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Zorngården i Mora
Zorngården i Mora
Photo: Wikimedia commons
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The Zorn villa and Liebermann Villa: Jewish cultural heritage between the private and public

Research
Culture and languages

Matilda Eriksson, PhD student, University of Oxford and part of the Arts & Humanities Research Council-financed pan European collaboration research project 'Jewish Country Houses'.

Lecture
Date
2 Dec 2025
Time
18:00 - 19:30
Location
Central Gothenburg - specific location will be announced to all registered participants closer to the event.
Cost
50 including Swedish fika
Registration deadline
1 December 2025

Participants
Matilda Eriksson, PhD student in history, University of Oxford
Good to know
EVENT IN SWEDISH. The event is linked to the celebration of 250 years of Jewish life in Sweden.
Organizer
Co-arranged by CCHS, UGOT, Judiska församlingen i Göteborg and Katz Judiska Kulturfond.
Registration is closed.

This presentation explores the Liebermann Villa in Berlin and the Zorn House in Mora; two homes that reveal how their owners, who were famous artists and cultural celebrities of their time, negotiated with personal and national identity in modern Europe. 

While rooted in very different geographical and cultural contexts, both artists transformed their homes through the collection of art and objects, turning private residences into reflections of taste, social standing, and cultural belonging. Yet these were never purely private spaces: interviews, depictions of the houses and home-studios in the artists’ own works, and photographs circulated in the press, making them semi-public cultural spaces during the artists’ lifetimes. Thus, revealing the liminal, shifting nature of the private/public divide and how both homes functioned as public-facing environments that shaped identity and cultural memory. 

This presentation highlights some of the ways that the Liebermann's and the Zorn's engaged with modernity, through their collections, material culture, and domestic spaces, and how these homes served as stages and public-facing cultural spaces long before becoming museums.

Liebermann villa Berlin
Liebermann villa Berlin
Photo: Wikimedia commons