At the time, the province of Scania was culturally still imbued with a nature-bound inwardness, a tendency established at the turn of the century through intercourse with, principally, Germany and Denmark. Hence, it was almost an unwritten law that funds from the region's private donors should fall to local artists. This qualification came all the more naturally as the lines of communication between Malmö and Stockholm were quite flimsy and those with the rest of Scandinavia and Europe at large dented by upheavals of war. Thus, the Edstrand Foundation came into being at a period of transition and recovery, born of a provincialism which, sheltered by Sweden's policy of nonalignment, had rather survived its usefulness. Thekla Edstrand's circle was made up of prominent artists and administrators, and it was their protégés among the younger painters, sculptors and printmakers who received the grants.

Since that time, the Foundation's profile has changed considerably, a fact attributable to the modernist movement's belated inroad in the nineteenfifties, as witnessed by the creation of the Lund Art Center as a venue for contemporary international art, as well as to regional development of new exhibition and education amenities during the ensuing decades. A cause of at least equal importance is the change that has taken place in the geopolitical arena and the aesthetic fields of study. The Foundation has seen it as something of a challenge to shoulder the role of patron of the arts in a world rife with the infectious excess of media and information technologies, which have brought about an art scene where both the local map and the taxonomy of artistic means of expression now border on the incalculable. The demand to keep up with recent developments has been imposed chiefly by strenghtened financial status, but also by the latitude allowed by the Foundation's statutes. The original wording of the Edstrand Foundation's program bears eclusive witness to a highly indefinite concern for emergent art. No directives as regards art forms or local affiliations are given, just a quite spacious proviso: "preferably younger artists".

Thus, the Foundation's board and nominating committee are entrusted with an all but unrestricted responsibility in allocating the yearly returns. Traditional approaches would be rather ill-advised; to the extent that any fixing of boundaries has been involved, it has been informed by practical not ideological considerations. Presently, the grants are distributed throughout the Nordic countries, a practice that no doubt is keeping things within bounds but even so shouldn't be viewed as an instance of rampant Nordism. Rather, it is a tribute to the experimental plurity found in art today, in the time-honored medium of painting as in the go-getting one of video-or indeed curating.

Ola Billgren