The Museum of Contemporary Art Zagreb

http://courage.btk.mta.hu/courage/individual/n7653

Building of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Zagreb.

The Municipal Gallery of Contemporary Art, the forerunner of the Museum of Contemporary Art, was founded in Zagreb on 21 December 1954. It consisted of the Contemporary Art Gallery, the Centre for Photography, Film and Television, the Benko Horvat Collection and the Library and Documentation Department, and it also included Meštrović Atelier, the Primitive Art Gallery and the Jozo Kljaković Collection until the latter became independent. The aim of the gallery is to document and promote contemporary art. The gallery was located in Count Kulmer's baroque palace in Zagreb’s Upper Town. Due to the modest conditions of the location, the Museum never had a permanent collection, and it performed its museum-gallery and educational activities by organizing thematic and monographic exhibitions of Croatian and foreign artists. The decision to construct a new museum building was enacted in 1998, and the museum moved to its new premises in 2009.

The cultural role of the institution in the socialist era consisted primarily of the promotion and affirmation of contemporary artists and the preservation of their works. It is the work of the documentation section that resulted in the emergence of the eleven collections that the museum now owns: Collection of Drawings, Graphics, Prints and Art on Paper, Film and Video Collection, Photography Collection, Media Art Collection, Sculpture Collection, Collection of Paintings, the Tošo Dabac Archive, the Kožarić Studio, the Seissel Donation, the Richter Collection and the Benko Horvat Collection. Most of the works from the Museum of Contemporary Art were created in the period of socialism, and some of them are by artists who were active in the cultural opposition.

Founder

Location

Zagreb Avenija Dubrovnik 17, Croatia 10000
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Website

http://www.msu.hr/?/hr/

Date of founding

1954

Acronym (if any)

Type of organisation

Museum

Operational type

Government/State organisation

Operator roles

Author(s) of this page

Bencetić, Lidija

Collector at

Main actor of

References

Benažić, Marina , interview by Bencetić, Lidija , December 23, 2016. COURAGE Registry Oral History Collection

Last edited on: 2018-07-03 15:04:42