MSU - Muzej Suvremene Umjetnosti Zagreb

Profile

The Contemporary Art Museum is today's name of the City of Zagreb Galleries, consisting of the Contemporary Art Gallery, Centre for Photography, The Benko Horvat Collection, Library, and Documentation Dept. It also used to include The Mestrovic Atelier (Today's Mestrovic Foundation), The Primitive Art Gallery (The Croatian Naive Art Museum), and The "Jozo Kljakovic" Collectionotoday under the management of the Visual Arts Education centre), before they became separate institutions. The Museum was established on 21 December, 1954, when, under the decision of the then City of Zagreb National Board, The Municipal Gallery of Contemporary Art was established, with the purpose of following, documenting, and promoting contemporary art events, styles, and phenomena. The Gallery immediately began to establish its own holdings and act as a museum establishment, following modern museological principles and needs of the period.
The Museum has two addresses in the Zagreb's Upper Town: Katarinin trg 2, at count Kulmer's Baroque palace, where the exhibition space is located, and Habdeliceva 2, where the library, documentation archives, and management are located. The largest part of the Museum's Collection consists of the works by both Croatian and foreign authors created after 1950, while there is also a smaller part dating back to the first half of the 20th c. Namely, their presence is essential for grasping the concept of both modern and contemporary art. The Museum also keeps various donations, such as the comprehensive and heterogeneous art collection of Benko Horvat; a complex surrealist opus of the painter Josip Seissel (donated by Ms. Silvana Seissel), and a special collection of the architect Vjenceslav Richter that is still kept at his home.
Numerous works from the International Art Collection pertain to the international movement New Tendencies . As an international manifestation, the movement was taking place at the Contemporary Art Gallery in the 1961-1973 period, thus confirming Zagreb as one among the most interesting European art centres of the 60's. The five manifestations managed to gather numerous outstanding artists (Vasarely, Soto, Le Parc, Piene, Alviani, Biasi), including also art critics and theoreticians, such as Abraham Moles and Umberto Eco.
Owing to the expertise of its curators and associates, the Gallery confirmed its status as a contemporary type museum. Merely ten years after its establishment, it was invited to include a part of its holdings into the XXXII Venetian Biennale (1964), in the scope of the exhibition entitled "Arte d'oggi nei musei", together with seventeen of the world's most prominent museums. In 1966, it was in the company of the fifteen most prominent galleries of Europe, America, and Japan at "Le 2emme Salon international des Galeries pilotes" in Lausanne.
Today's importance of the Museum of the Contemporary Art is confirmed by the activities undertaken for the construction of a special Museum building. After several studies in 1996, the site of the future Museum was set in Novi Zagreb, at the crossroads of Avenija Veceslava Holjevca and Avenija Dubrovnik. On 10 March, 1999-111., national solliciting for tenders has been announced for the architectural and town planning design of the future Museum building.
The Museum has no collection on permanent display due to the modest conditions under which it is presently accommodated. Its museum/gallery and educational activities are performed by organizing thematic and monographic exhibitions of both local and foreign artists, exhibitions of the works from its holdings, lectures, workshops, and children's workshops.
The Museum of Contemporary Art's collections today include around 9,000 works of both modern and contemporary art by local and foreign authors. After the new Museum building is constructed, they shall finally become available to the general public.