“Contemporary art as a field for human freedom, as a possibility to understand a modern individual’s view of society.” The field of freedom is much broader than it would be without contemporary art, according to Slavko Bogdanovic, lawyer and chairman of the board of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Vojvodina. Therefore, it is already in the interest of all to maintain its existence.

The basic conditions for contemporary art are undergoing a radical change in Vojvodina, as in other parts of Serbia and the Southeast-European world. The pre-war structures of production, mediation, theory formation, and marketing have been destroyed or taken over; missing resources have been preventing and making the new conditions for advancement more difficult for a long time up until today. But the attitudes of many people in the art enterprise have changed. Instead of commiserating over existing adversities, they are taking action.

Museum für Zeitgenössische Kunst, Vojvodina. Part 1

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Museum für Zeitgenössische Kunst, Vojvodina. Part 2

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Museum für Zeitgenössische Kunst, Vojvodina. Part 3

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In January, 2007, an international competition was announced for the planning of a museum of contemporary art in Vojvodina. The jury selected the Canadian-Serbian team made up of Robert Claiborne, Lia Ruccolo, and Ivan Markov in the following June. The plan for the new museum will introduce a new era to the building of contemporary art. There will be a change, both physically and conceptually, according to Ljubica Milovic. She is the director of the project development and is looking positively forward. Gone is the fear of works of art becoming waterlogged by an overflowing Danube. Gone is also the time of a lack of restoration materials and its correlating continual shortage of space, which was gradually transforming the museum from an exhibition space into an art storage facility. Instead of relying on economic fate, there is hope in new and especially private sponsors, and in a world that is open to a Serbia that can in turn itself be open. The vision of the building has symbolic value. It represents the official opening of the art of the country and its inlet into a world which was, until now, not open to Serbians. However, the project has still not been realised, until now, the museum only exists in the planning stage.

Smaller organizations in the second largest city of Serbia, for example, the Center for New Media kuda.org or the Art Klinika—which dedicates itself to artistically healing a society that is still recovering from the evils of war and nationalism—are more mobile due to their structure, and perhaps more open. It is a question of facing the necessity to meet changing conditions with new concepts, regarding which the director of the museum, Zivko Grozdanic, is full of ideas.

In regard to the issues of for what a museum of modern art should stand and wherein its current efforts in the context of the world of art lie, check out the Serbian view regarding these questions, which were posed by CastYourArt’s Ewa Stern in Novi Sad, in our podcast episode. (wh/jn)