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Jon Sigurd Curman (Stockholm 29 April 1879 – Stockholm 14 February 1966) was a Swedish architectural historian and restoration architect who served as riksantikvarie (national inspector of antiquities) 1923-1946.

In the early years of the 20th century, Curman was involved in the restoration of Strängnäs Cathedral and later responsible for restoration work on the abbey churches of Vreta and Varnhem and many parish churches. His work marks the shift towards a less radical restoration technique during the early 20th century, as a reaction against that represented, in particular, by Helgo Zettervall.

Together with Johnny Roosval, he arranged many of the exhibitions during the 1900s and 1910s that helped form an awareness of the cultural heritage in Swedish parish churches. Curman and Roosval were the co-founders of the Sveriges Kyrkor documentation project.

Early life

Born in Stockholm, Curman was the son of the artistically gifted physician and balneologist Carl Curman, a docent at the Karolinska Institutet and professor of anatomy at the Royal Academy of Arts. Carl Curman's wife Calla was active in many philantropic organizations.

Curman went to school at Norra Latin in Stockholm and began his academic studies in Uppsala in 1897. His early years at university were dedicated to mathematics and sciences, but he ended up with a fil. kand. degree in 1900 that also included Romance languages and Aesthetics with the history of art and literature. The following year he enrolled at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm to study architecture. He studied there for three years and acquired most of an architect's education, without actually graduating. Having married Signhild Gödecke, daughter of a publicist and educator, on 5 July 1903, he and his new wife left for the continent on the following day. For two years, Sigurd travelled through Germany, Italy (including several months in Rome) and France, visiting museums and studying architectural landmarks and archaeological sites. Signhild followed him most of the time, only departing for Sweden for a few months in 1904 to visit her family. Meanwhile Sigurd stayed in Bonn, studying building conservation and restoration for the art historian Paul Clemen.

When Curman resumed his art historical studies, Johnny Roosval had begun teaching the subject at Uppsala. Roosval was to oversee Curman's licentiate dissertation on the architecture of the Cistercian order, which he finished in 1908. He continued working on the same subject and defended a doctoral dissertation on Cistercian architecture in 1912.

Curman had begun teaching architectural history at the Academy of Art in Stockholm after finishing his licentiate degree in 1908, and a couple of months after finishing his doctorate, he was appointed professor of Swedish and Comparative Architecture at the Academy.

Exhibitions and publication projects

Exhibitions of ecclesiastical art

Another expression of this new consciousness of the values of the historical heritage were the ambitious documentation and publication projects that started around this time. Gamla svenska städer (Old Swedish Cities), published in three volumes 1908-1930, Svensk arkitektur (Swedish Architecture), also in three volumes and published 1908-1924, and the largest of all, the still unfinished Sveriges Kyrkor (The Churches of Sweden), published in numerous parts since 1912. Curman was

Gamla svenska städer 1908-30

Svensk arkitektur 1908-24

Sveriges kyrkor 1912-

Restoration projects

Strängnäs Cathedral

Many of the cathedrals of Sweden had been restored during the 19th century, sometimes very roughly, as with the later severely criticized projects of Helgo Zettervall for Lund and Uppsala. The task for the restoration of Strängnäs Cathedral was entrusted the architect Fredrik Lilljekvist, known for his restoration of Gripsholm Castle.

The restoration of the cathedral of Strängnäs was to establish a new doctrine in Swedish restoration. In 1907 the young Curman was employed as "antiquarian supervisor", whose task it was to make sure the medieval paintings were not harmed and to document the restoration. While Lilljekvist would aim at reconstruction of original forms, in accordance with the ideals inherited from Zettervall, Curman would suggest keeping later additions or installing completely new details in the current Art Nouveau style. He would sometimes recommend keeping fragmentary building parts rather than trying to reconstruct them. In Strängnäs, the north and south portals of the "core church" of the cathedral -- the old narrow 13th century nave from before a row of chapels had been added and later completely incorporated with the building on each side -- had remained in fragmentary form. Lilljekvist insisted on restoring the one to the north, but in accordance with the suggestion of Curman, the south portal was left in its fragmentary -- and to the taste of a typical 19th century restoration architect unaesthetic -- state. Lilljekvist's views on restoration had developed already during his work on Gripsholm, which had caused a debate over principles for restoration, and in Strängnäs he allowed himself to be swayed by the views of Curman, whose influence on the project appears to have gone well beyond his job description.

Parish churches

Including Balingsta and abandoned churches

Curman's restorations included a number of churches that had been completely abandoned, so-called ödekyrkor, all of them very old churches that had been replaced by new and more spacious churches during the 19th century. A few of these old churches had been purchased by the state and in a couple of cases been moved to outdoor museums. Despite the interest some art historians had for these churches, it was only after the parishes began to care that restoration projects became feasible, and a number of abandoned churches were restored during the years between the world wars. The most dramatic restoration was the Romanesque 12th century parish church of Balingsta in Uppland, which had been replaced in 1872 by a Neo-Gothic church by the prolific architect Adrian Crispin Peterson. By the time the restoration began in 1916 the old church had mostly turned into a ruin. The initiative appears to have come from the English-born parish priest, Edward Holliday-Owen, who found an enthusiastic audience in Archbishop Nathan Söderblom and Curman, who was at the time preoccupied with the restoration of the nearby parish church of Västeråker. Thanks to a large donation from the banker Alfred Berg, owner of the medieval castle of Vik in the parish, the restoration proceeded quickly and the church could be re-inaugurated in 1919.

Curman's biographer Anders Åman lists a selection of sixteen abandoned churches for whose restoration Curman was responsible, beginning with Balingsta, continuing with the medieval church in archbishop Söderblom's own home parish of Trönö in Hälsingland (1920), and ending with Hanhals Church in Halland (1940). He was a close friend of Söderblom for a long time but fell out with him over the issue of the restoration of the church in Oviken in Jämtland (completed in 1935); Söderblom was not against it but was unwilling to use a rikskollekt, a national collection of money at mass for the purpose of this building, which he considered of more interest to the cultural heritage than to the Church as such.

Riksantikvarie

National Museum of Antiquities

Independence of RAÄ (1938)

Bibliography

• Åman, Anders: Sigurd Curman. Riksantikvarie – ett porträtt. Stockholm: Atlantis; Kungl. Vitterhets Historie och Antikvitets Akademien, 2008.
• Asplund, Karl:
• Edman, Victor: En svensk restaureringstradition. Tre arkitekter gestaltar 1900-talets historiesyn. Stockholm: Byggförlaget, 1999. (Diss. Stockholm: Royal Institute of Technology, 1999.) ISBN 91-7988-186-6
• Ljungström, Lars: ...Aendnu gamblare. Fredrik Lilljekvists restaurering av Gripsholms slott och 1890-talets restaureringsdebatt. Nyköping: Södermanlands museum, 1987.
• Olsson, Martin, "Curman, Jon Sigurd", Svenskt biografiskt lexikon 9, pp. 469-473