The Swedish Arts Council distributes operating grants and project grants within the visual arts area. These funds are distributed to projects and organisations within the various art forms, as well as through the Culture Cooperation Model. The Swedish Arts Grants Committee distributes grants to individual artists. The association Svensk Form works to stimulate development in Swedish design, and to spread and deepen knowledge of design issues in Sweden. It consists of 13 regional associations, working in each region to contribute to spreading knowledge about form and design through collaborations with municipality, region and industry organisations.
Other important government-funded actors in the area of visual art are the national museums and similar cultural institutions, working within this area, including the National Museum of Fine Arts, the National Museum of Modern Art, the foundation Carl och Olga Milles Lidingöhem, the foundation for the Thiel Gallery, Bildmuseet, the Zorn Collections, and the foundation for Prince Eugen’s Waldemarsudde. In recent years, the Museum of Modern Art, the National Museum, and the Swedish Arts Council have collaborated to actively compensate for the historical under-representation of women artists’ works in the collections of these museums by purchasing such works of art, to enable more people to see a greater diversity of public works of art in their everyday lives.
The National Public Arts Council (Statens konstråd) and the Swedish Centre for Architecture and Design were government agencies that, from January 1st, 2026, are part of the Swedish Museum of Modern Art. As a result of this merger, the enlarged government agency now maintains the Museum of Modern Art, supports architecture and design, and publicly displays artworks. In a report submitted in 2019, the Swedish Arts Council showed that insufficient knowledge, unclear divisions of responsibilities, and an unclear application of laws and regulations by national, municipal, and regional authorities have increased risks of damage and loss of building-related public works of art in 20th-century cultural environments. As a result of this report, the National Heritage Board, in collaboration with the Swedish Arts Council, was commissioned by the government to work to ensure that building-related public art is taken into account in cultural heritage valuation (Ku2019 / 01191 / KO).
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