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Criticism on Display. The Swedish Museum of Architectureand the Production of History in the mid-1970sChristina PechRoyal Institute of Technology, StockholmThis proposal presents a case study of an exhibition produced by the Swedish Museum of Architecture in 1976. Taking this as a departure, it will discuss the museum and the exhibition as a site for architectural criticism, along with criticism as a method of history writing. The study is part of an ongoing research project on the historiography of Swedish Modern Architecture.When the exhibition The Breakthrough and Crisis of Functionalism: Swedish Housing 1930-1980 opened at the Neue Sammlung in Munich in 1976 it was not what the West German institution had had in mind when commissioning the Swedish Museum of Architecture to introduce the celebrated Stockholm Exhibition of 1930. Instead of presenting a tribute to early Swedish modernism the museum delivered a highly efficient visualization of architectural criticism, borrowing techniques both from the campaigning of the daily press as well as the narrative structure of literary fiction. Scrutinizing the cause-and-effects of the implementation of modern architecture in Sweden, the exhibition ultimately arrived at a very negative reading of modern housing. At the same time, the Breakthrough and Crisis was the first comprehensive history (without ever identifying its content as such) produced on Swedish twentieth century housing, accompanied by a substantial catalogue based on original research.This specific exhibition endeavor highlights the complexity of the institution’s self-proclaimed and sometimes contradictory tasks: to promote contemporary Swedish architecture to a professional international audience and to examine the built environment of the welfare state. This ‘dilemma’ also calls into question the disciplinary belonging of architecture in the museum, in-between architecture as fine art and architecture as a societal enterprise, a division that could potentially also be related to the role of criticism performed by the museum.In summary, this proposal aims to reflect on the role of the architectural museum and its activities as central to the discursive understanding of architecture, a location and a situation where there is no distinction between the dissemination of criticism and the production of history.&#160;Christina Pech is a lecturer in architectural history and theory at the School of Architecture, Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), Stockholm. She gained her PhD in architectural history from KTH with the thesis Architecture and Resistance. Alternative Approaches in Swedish Architecture 1970-1980, published in 2011. She is currently pursuing research at ArkDes (formerly the Swedish Museum of Architecture) on the historiography of Swedish modern architecture. A related article, The Museum and the Magazine. Notes on the Historiography of Swedish Architecture, is to be published during spring 2017.