ABSTRACT
This chapter explores Queen Dowager Hedwig Eleonora’s cultural interests: her commissioning of art, architecture, and theatrical performances together with her vast collections of art and other objects from near and far. It is argued that these activities and objects formed part of the negotiation of positions and relations in an expanding world. There was a noticeable ambivalence though, because objects, images, and performances were about establishing hierarchies, with Sweden and its royalty at the top, and yet the display of objects, like the artworks and performances, abounded in playful non-hierarchical juxtapositions.
