Public Discussions About The Concept of The Museum of Contemporary

The first was the conference "What contemporary art demands from its institutions?", organized in the Moderna galerija Information Center on 1 and 2 March 2003.

The conference focused on the issues of contemporary art, particularly in terms of museum documentation, presentation, and production, and also in relation to other spaces/institutions in a similar line of work. The aim was to go beyond the local issues and address the open questions of contemporary art in general as well as the future development of the spaces dedicated to storing, presentation, interpretation, and production of art. For this reason we invited, in addition to Slovene art professionals Jerneja Batič, Barbara Borčić, Vuk Ćosić, Peter Tomaž Dobrila, Simon Kardum, Jurij Krpan, Gregor Podnar, Tadej Pogačar, Andrej Smrekar, Lilijana Stepančič, Igor Španjol, Simona Vidmar, and Igor Zabel, also a number of curators and directors of art institutions from abroad, among them Nicolas Bourriaud, the director of Palais de Tokyo in Paris, Edelbert Koeb, the director of the Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig in Vienna, Lars Grambye, the director of the Danish Contemporary Art Foundation from Copenhagen, and Joseph Ortner, a cofounder of the group Museum in Progress in Vienna.
The conclusion arrived at was that contemporary art crucially needs a space that does more than merely present it; it should also, and above all, provide opportunities for the purchase of works, for theoretical analysis, international networking, and the production of works. Slovenia vitally requires a museum of contemporary art, and the former army barracks building at Metelkova 22, when renovated, would serve this purpose.

There were two events that formed part of the Form-Specific exhibition: a continuation of the conference "What Contemporary Art Demands from its Institutions?" as part of Apolonija Šušteršič's project Showroom/Meeting Room, Backroom, which focused on the issue of the future of the building at Metelkova and of the Museum of Contemporary Art, and a panel discussion entitled "Museum of Contemporary Art - Instrument of Constitution?" on June 10, 2003.

Both were attended by artists, concerned experts and art professionals, representatives of the Ministry of Culture, and representatives of the local community and businesses.

Between a Museum of Modern Art and a Museum of Contemporary Art at the Beginning of the 21st Century (June 26 - July 11, 2006)
A series of five talks

Between June 26 and July 11, 2006 Moderna galerija organized a series of talks addressing the relationship between the museum of modern art and the museum of contemporary art. It was organized as part of its reorganization into two units, a museum of modern art and a museum of contemporary art, and also due to the new and disparate suggestions concerning the possible use of the building at Metelkova 22.

The talks were delivered by prominent experts, directors of art museums, curators, and theoreticians, such as Kasper König, the director of the Ludwig Museum in Cologne (June 26), Carlos Basualdo, art critic and curator for contemporary art at the Philadelphia Museum of Art (July 3), Nicolas Bourriaud, art critic, curator and theoretician (July 6), Marco de Michelis, dean of the Faculty of Arts and Design/IUAV in Venice (July 7), and Peter Pakesch, director of the Kunsthaus / Landesmuseum Joanneum Graz (July 11).

All the participants in the series of talks stressed the importance and the uniqueness of the Arteast Collection 2000+, which Moderna galerija presented publicly for the first time in 2000 in the not yet renovated former Yugoslav Army barracks complex at Metelkova. In 1994, Moderna galerija was allotted the use of one of those buildings. The first public presentation of the collection that focuses predominantly on Eastern European art based on the traditions of the avant-gardes coincided with Manifesta in Ljubljana. This presentation was also a harbinger of a new museum of contemporary art that was to evolve on the basis of the collection.

The allotment of a new building also suggested the division of the Moderna galerija into a Museum of Modern Art, which is to remain in the existing Moderna galerija building, and a Museum of Contemporary Art, to be housed in the allotted army barracks building at Metelkova. The founding of a special museum dedicated to contemporary art is further dictated by the fact that there is no major institution in Slovenia that is suitable for contemporary innovative practices and their traditions.
The program we have planned for the museum at Metelkova focuses on the new ways of presenting and interpreting contemporary art as well as on greater interdisciplinarity.

Arteast Collection 2000+ - international tours and loans of individual works: 2001 - 2006

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