May 22, 2007, 13:52 GMT
Stockholm - A 100-year-old former customs warehouse on Stockholm's waterfront will house a future 'interactive' museum dedicated to Swedish pop legends ABBA, museum founders said Tuesday.
'We have had a tremendous response from people and the city,' museum co-founder and owner Ewa Wigenheim-Westman said.
Her husband, Ulf Westman, told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa that the museum would be funded privately.
In addition to original stage costumes, music instruments, photos and other memorabilia, visitors will also have a chance to view clips from ABBA concerts.
Westman said the museum was estimated to attract 500,000 visitors a year and would open in the spring of 2009.
Plans included offering fans a chance to record their favourite ABBA hits at the museum where a replica of the group's recording studio was to be set up.
Former ABBA members Agnetha Faltskog, Benny Andersson, Bjorn Ulvaeus, and Anni-Fred Reuss (formerly Lyngstad) approved the project a year ago after being approached by the museum founders.
In a joint statement the four former ABBA members, who were not to be active partners in the project, said they hoped it would be 'a fun and groovy museum to visit.'
Wigenheim-Westman said she got the idea to the museum along with her husband after visiting The Beatles Story Exhibition in Liverpool. She contacted the former ABBA members, who still sell two to three million albums a year despite it being two decades since they released their last joint album.
ABBA, who had their international breakthrough when they won the 1974 Eurovision Song Contest with Waterloo, have sold an estimated 370 million albums.
Stockholm mayor Kristina Axen Olin said the city welcomed the museum that would generate tourism for the Swedish capital.
The project includes a web site: www.abbamuseum.com.
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