Antti Arjava, the current Chief Executive of the Culture Fund, will retire at the end of May.
Mr Pettersson will take up his new post on 1 June. This will mark the end of his tenure as Director General of the National Museum of Sweden.
Pettersson would have had one year left in his six-year term in Sweden.
Prior to the Nationalmuseum, Pettersson worked as Director of the Ateneum Art Museum, Director of the Finnish Institute in London, Director of the Alvar Aalto Foundation and Alvar Aalto Museum, and in various positions at the National Museum of Art.
Pettersson has a PhD in art history at the University of Helsinki. He is a docent of museology at the University of Jyväskylä.
With Pettersson’s appointment, the Kulttuurirahasto will switch to a managing director model, while up until now the director has been an employee-related chief representative.
Kulttuurirahasto is a foundation operating with private funds, which manages a capital of almost two billion euros.
Kulttuurirahasto says that it finances projects and distributes grants annually for almost 60 million euros.