- Here at Kalmar County Museum we fear a loss of SEK 5 million, which is an incredible amount. We know that our cash register will end sometime early in the fall, then we have nothing more, says Jonas Hellberg, who is chairman of Kalmar County Museum and also chairman of the County Museums' cooperation council.

At the Kalmar County Museum, people are now appealing to the Kalmar County Region for help to cope with the corona crisis and avoid having to alert staff before the summer. But Jonas Hellberg is critical of the fact that there is not already state aid that the country's county museums can access to help mitigate the effects of the pandemic.

- The state must take its share of the responsibility, and it has not been done so far. We have added two cultural packages, one of 500 million and one of 300 million, and none of them we have been able to take advantage of. It's not good enough. The regions and municipalities are already doing well, here the state must take its responsibility. For the state is an important financier of the regional culture, says Jonas Hellberg.

Several county museums risk bankruptcy

In his role as chairman of the County Museums Cooperation Council, Jonas Hellberg sees that several of the country's county museums have a really difficult time and are at risk of bankruptcy.

- The cultural heritage is part of our history. Kalmar County Museum is more than a hundred years old, and so it looks in almost the whole country. The county museums are old institutions. That the pandemic would cause some of these to go bankrupt, I think that would be awful, he says.