For over a century, the Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities (Östasiatiska museet) in Stockholm has served as a focal point for Asian studies in Sweden. Established in 1926, the museum was the result of pioneering archaeological excavations characterized by international collaboration between Sweden and China. However, today this once-treasured institution faces what Professor Pär Cassel calls “destruction by neglect” of its academic mission. Its current decline carries deep repercussions for how East Asia and its rich histories are studied, preserved, and made available to the public in Northern Europe.
Cassel, an expert in late imperial and modern Chinese histories at U-M, is now fighting for the museum’s survival.
The foundation for the Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities rests on a unique 1920s partnership between Swedish archaeologist Johan Gunnar Andersson – co-discoverer of the famed “Peking Man” – Chinese researchers, and the government of the then-Republic of China to share research and preserve recovered artifacts. This collaboration secured a large trove of Neolithic items to be equitably shared between the two nations. Later, oracle bones and bronzes joined the collection. One significant portion of materials were preserved in China, while the other was held in Sweden. With the upheavals of war and revolution, the China-based collections were almost entirely lost, leaving the Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities in possession of over 100,000 remaining artifacts. Cassel calls these “unique clues to China’s deep history.”
In 1963, with royal sponsorship, the collection moved to its current location, a refurbished building that once housed early modern military stables. In 1985, an extensive reference library was added. The museum housed specialists working on its collections, published a widely circulated research bulletin, and held public events and exhibits on Asian history. It served as an intellectual “competence hub” for generations of scholars in Sweden and visiting from abroad. As Cassel notes, the museum is a vital “representation of what relatively benign relations can produce,” characterizing it as a “gem” for the study of China and East Asia in both Sweden and Scandinavia.
As a young student, Cassel himself was inspired by the museum’s resources. He checked out books from its library when he first became interested in the Chinese language. As his intellectual pursuits developed, the ability to interact closely with oracle bones, bronzes, and calligraphy in its collections sparked further interest. Cassel is far from alone in these engagements. In addition to drawing researchers from across Europe and around the world, over the course of a century, the museum introduced East Asia to countless members of the Swedish public in its exhibit halls and library stacks.
Yet, even as an institution with wide-ranging public and academic impacts, governmental bodies and the museum’s own administration have turned on it.
The museum is now threatened by controversial financial models. While the government owns the premises, the Swedish National Property Board (Statens fastighetsverk) charges the institution market rent, as if the buildings were not specially repurposed as a museum. For the museum and others like it in Sweden, these rents consume nearly half of their total budgets. Cassel describes this as a "category error," with the government effectively treating non-profit cultural repositories like a “commercial enterprise.”
Beyond finances, the museum faces an internal crisis of leadership. Current administrators see it more as an exhibit space than a research center with unique collections. Such pressures from above have accelerated a “hollowing out of expertise,” as specialized librarians and staff with Asian language expertise are replaced by generalists and what Cassel calls “museum bureaucrats” who often view the collections as a logistical burden.
Evidence of this decline has become increasingly visible to the scholarly community and the public. Cassel notes that in 2024, the museum’s management dismantled its core China Before China exhibit, which highlighted histories of Sino-Swedish intellectual collaboration, intending to replace it with thematically ambiguous “interactive displays.” The museum administration has reportedly thrown away large portions of its reference holdings and back issues of academic journals without consensus approval, reducing a world-class research library to a small internal resource for a shrinking staff. Cassel warns that “every time you move things around, knowledge is lost.” Without a change of course, repercussions of neglect are difficult, if not impossible, to reverse.
Since the museum’s current staff lack employment security or scholarly tenure, the burden ofadvocacy has fallen on a diverse coalition of tenured academics, former directors, and public "friends of the museum.” This group, which includes Swedish and US-based scholars like Cassel and Magnus Fiskesjö of Cornell University, is actively lobbying the government and exerting international pressure to reverse the decline.
Cassel and his colleagues, combining both academic and community forces, believe that exposing the museum’s mismanagement to the light of international scrutiny is the best way to save the institution. Despite the challenges, they see the museum’s continued existence as progress in itself. As the fight continues, their goal remains to preserve the Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities as a “beacon of deeper knowledge of Asia” in Sweden and a lasting source of international intellectual goodwill.
For more, see Pär Cassel, “Solitary Swedish Sinologists: Three Hundred and Fifty Years of Swedish China Studies” in the Journal of Chinese History (2023) and Ola Wong, “The Museums of World Culture are Burning their Books” in Östasiatiska biblioteksföreningen, March 4, 2026.
