In 1968 Palle Nielsen approached the Moderna Museet in Stockholm with a proposal for turning the museum into an adventure playground. From 30 September to 20 October 1968 Modellen. En modell
for ett kvalitativt samhalle (The Model - A Model for a Qualitative Society) was installed and children under eighteen were offered free access. The event attracted more than 35,000 visitors.
Nielsen's insistence on using the gallery space for his mass utopian model was precocious, prefiguring institutional critique and activist uses of the white cube.
This book presents a selection of the material donated to the Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA) by Palle Nielsen in 2009, and shown the same year as part of the exhibition Time as
Matter. MACBA Collection. New Acquisitions. It includes an essay by Lars Bang Larsen, various texts by Palle Nielsen as well as the artist's documentary photos from The Model.
The mere fact that they were swimming in the paint is a step towards a change in the structure of society. It is small. It is slow. But it is part of a movement made up of wishes and actions.
(Palle Nielsen, `The social artists', 1969)
