Abecita Pop Art & Photo – in English

Opening hours

You are welcome to visit us every day in the week, apart from Monday when we are closed. National holidays and our preparations in conjunction with new exhibitions can effect the opening hours.

Monday – closed
Tuesday – 11-16
Wednesday – 11-16
Thursday – 11-16
Friday – 11-16
Saturday – 11-15
Sunday – 11-15

Price of admission

Adult – 135 kr

Student – 60 kr

Under 15 years old – Free

Vip card (Admission, photo lectures and events)

Adult – 500 kr

Student 300 kr

Our much appreciated coffe is included in all admissions.

How to find us

Abecita Pop art & Photo
Herrljungagatan 15
SE-506 30 Borås

By public transport from Gothenburg:
Bus 100 to Borås Resecentrum. From Borås Resecentrum bus 150 to Knalleland.

By car, coming to Borås:
Follow signposts to ”Knalleland” and ”Djurpark” all the way to their parking. Turn right in to Herrljungagatan.
On your right side after about 300 meters, you see the Abecita sign on a great old factory buildning. You have arrived.

Photography and graphic art – all under the same roof.

As a visitor you encounter a museum that offers history, photography and graphic art from Europe and the US, together with Nordic textile art. The museum also exhibits a wide range of photographic art on 3 floors – 2400 m². Together with the museum staff and fifty voluntary helpers, we strive to offer interesting exhibitions and exceptional service. Open six days a week.

The Collection.

The Abecita Pop art and Photo museum exhibits international photography and graphic art, together with Nordic textile art. The collection is unique in Europe and consists of more than 500 works, representing over 50 artists from 1961 and onwards, starting with the breakthrough of pop art in the 60s and outstanding works from each decade to the present day. All the great names in modern art are hanging here, including Warhol, Rauschenberg, Bourgeois, and Hockney. The collection has been slowly enlarged over more than 40 years.

Focus on photography.

Apart from graphic art, Abecita Pop art and Photo also has a strong focus on photography. The museum presents ten to fifteen different exhibitions every year of both Swedish and international photographers. Since 2008 the museum has hosted an impressing number of interesting exhibitions and photography evenings – an exciting mixture that has included Anders Petersen, JH Engström, Alison Jackson, Lars Tunbjörk, Georg Oddner, Walter Hirsch, Hans Hammarskiöld, Christer Strömholm, Dawid and many others. Exhibitions of the highest quality – in the middle of Borås.

The Nordic Award in Textiles.

The Abecita Pop art and Photo museum is owned by the foundation Fokus Borås, which presents a prize of SEK 150,000 every year to a Nordic textile artist to promote textile art – The Nordic Award in Textiles. The prize is awarded in November and is followed by a three month exhibition in Borås. All the prizewinners are represented in the museum’s textile section.

This is how it all began.

Abecita Pop art and Photo is not like other museums of art. The works hanging here were not initially intended to be exhibited in a museum, they were to decorate the walls in the home of two young people Berit and Bengt Swegmark. Their first work was bought by a local artist in 1960, and a lifelong interest was born. To start with they bought prints of young, relatively unknown artists like Hamilton, Rauschenberg, Lichtenstein and Hockney. Names which today are the most distinguished in the genre, and world-famous for their works.

Abecita Pop art and Photo and its collection is now owned by Fokus Borås, founded by the Swegmarks in 2000. The foundation is run on a non-profit basis to promote health and culture in Borås. The art museum was opened to the public in April of 2008 in an old textile mill.

From 1942 to 1992 the museum rooms were part of Abecita’s corset mill. Seamstresses worked here sewing corsets and underwear for Swedish women. At one time 300 persons worked here designing patterns, cutting out and doing needlework. but in the nineties production began to be moved abroad. You can still see how things once used to be and on the fourth floor of the museum there is a small brassiere museum, which tells the story of how Abecita came into being.

Café & Bookshop

There is a café by the entrance to the museum. You can sit down here in ”Chair one” chairs made by the Italian Magis, and enjoy a Swedish fika. The coffee is on the house. The café also shows works from current exhibitions together with attractive gifts and handicrafts. Welcome to a peaceful place, adapted for prams and wheelchairs. The museum bookshop is run in cooperation with Neva Books, Scandinavia’s largest supplier of photography books. You can find unique photography books here which cannot be found in the usual bookshops.