Blank 1864 - 1941

Editor: Here we have "Blank," a drawing on paper attributed to Niels Larsen Stevns, dating roughly from 1864 to 1941 and currently housed at the SMK. It's quite literally a blank page, slightly aged. I’m struck by how such emptiness can still feel weighty, like it's pregnant with untold stories. What does a blank page like this signify to you, especially considering the era it was created in? Curator: A blank page isn't just emptiness; it's potential, agency. In Stevns’ time, the rise of literacy and the democratization of information through print culture were radically reshaping society. Whose stories got told, and by whom, were intensely political questions. So, a blank page invites us to consider not only what *could* be written, but who holds the power to fill that void. Was Stevns perhaps critiquing the limitations placed upon certain voices, certain narratives? Editor: That's fascinating! I hadn’t thought about it in terms of power dynamics. Do you think the fact that it’s in a museum changes its meaning? Does it become a comment on the institution itself, perhaps? Curator: Absolutely. Museums historically served as gatekeepers, deciding which cultural narratives are preserved and presented. By exhibiting a 'blank', the museum prompts us to confront its own role in this process of selection and exclusion. It can serve as an uncomfortable, yet necessary, form of institutional self-reflection. To ask, what isn't represented within these walls and why? Editor: So, the art isn't necessarily *on* the page, but in the questions it provokes. Curator: Precisely. The ‘art’ is activated in the space between the object, the institution, and the viewer. Editor: That’s a perspective I’ll definitely carry with me. I now have a newfound appreciation for what this blank space communicates. Curator: And that is the true power of a blank canvas.