Benjamin Sutton reports at Hyperallergic that the Malmö Art Academy in Malmö, Sweden may be forced to close due to the municipal government’s decision to give Lund University—which operates the academy—only a year to vacate their building, which has housed the academy for the past twenty-one years since its founding in 1995. The city is acting in response to the local need for additional elementary and high schools, and wants to turn the academy’s building into a school for those students. Given the June 30, 2017 moving deadline for the academy, and the fact that a planned campus construction project to unite Lund University’s music, theater, and art academies with its interdisciplinary arts center will not be done until 2020 at the earliest, many are afraid the art school will be forced to shut down. Lund University maintains that a solution can be reached to save the Malmö Art Academy though, according to the dean of the faculty of fine and performing arts, Solfrid Söderlind: “Lund University has no intention of closing the academy, and the city of Malmö has expressed the intention [of] helping to prepare a workable solution in advance of the academy needing to move out…So there is no question of closure or shut-down of the Malmö Art Academy.”

Students at the academy, comprising undergraduates, masters, and PhD candidates, only learned of the art school’s impending eviction this week. An online petition addressed to the Malmö city council and municipal government has accrued over 5,000 signatures so far. A student representative, Andreas B. Amble, stated “The school has not been provided with any suitable interim premises suitable for its needs and operations…Without a school building we cannot continue as an Academy. The consequence is that an extraordinary art academy that has proven to be of exceptional quality and world renown, educating students of bachelor, master, and PhD levels, has to shut down within a year. This is unheard of and will be a tremendous loss for the Scandinavian, European, and international art scene.”

A meeting between the Lund University administration and the city is scheduled for June 28. Alumni of the academy include Nathalie Djurberg, Mats Andersson, Gabriella Ioannides, and Henrik Lund Jørgensen while its faculty includes the artists Haegue Yang, Nina Roos, and Emily Wardill.