Exhibiting in Slovenia II

The second symposium continues with in-depth investigations into practices of exhibiting art, architecture, and design in Slovenia. A number of venerable anniversaries of prominent Slovenian art institutions in 2019, in particular the 110th anniversary of the Jakopič Pavilion – the first venue to be purpose-built for exhibiting art – were just one of the motives for organising the first Exhibiting in Slovenia symposium. The excellent response and the diversity of topics relating to exhibition practices attested to the interest of both the professional and lay public in this subject and associated issues. For this reason, we decided to organise periodic meetings.

At this year’s symposium, selected exhibitions, institutions, and other phenomena involved in exhibiting art are again discussed chronologically and from various perspectives. We begin with an important topic – the oldest permanent exhibitions of the Provincial Museum of Carniola – and continue with mid-19th-century art societies, which were the first to advocate and provide for more regular exhibitions of the art of their day. Introductory papers also discuss one-off and short-term exhibitions that took place before World War II; they are followed by reflections on the more stable thematic, programmatic, and political orientations of institutions and their role in directing and shaping the visual arts domain in Slovenia. As in the first symposium, the topics converge in research on the accelerated institutionalisation of art, architecture, and design after World War II as well as on how and why this trend soon resulted in a wave of recurrent events, primarily biennials. We conclude with analyses of selected exhibitions, significant curatorial practices of recent decades, and new exhibition formats. In the last section we look at practices in the exhibiting of performative work, as we move from standard exhibition venues to virtual platforms and the public space. We are particularly pleased to be again joined in our reflections by insightful foreign researchers, who bring valuable external perspectives on Slovenian exhibition activity.

We intend to maintain the same approach we outlined with the first symposium: an in-depth reflection on exhibition activity in Slovenia that involves critical introspection and seeks to elucidate effects of exhibition practices that are harder to trace. Our explorations into how and why a certain exhibition practice occurs and becomes established, its relationship with the exhibited objects and art in general, and its interaction with political and other non-art discourses and agendas are guided by the desire to better understand both the medium of the exhibition and the internal logic and workings of the Slovenian art system.

Thursday, 21 April 2022

10:00 Welcome by Blaž Peršin, director of the Museum and Galleries of Ljubljana (MGML) and Beti Žerovc, representative of the organising committee, head of the research project Exhibiting of Art and Architecture between Artistic and Ideological Concepts. Case Study of Slovenia, 1947–1979 (J6-3137)

Exhibiting in Slovenia before World War I
Chair: Miha Valant

10:15 Mateja Kos: The Oldest Permanent Exhibitions of the Provincial Museum of Carniola in Ljubljana (video of the lecture in Slovenian)
10:35 Irena Kraševac: The First Exhibitions of the Slovenian Artists' Society (Slovensko umetniško društvo) in Ljubljana and Zagreb in 1900/1901  (video of the lecture in Slovenian)
10:55 Tomaž Brejc: Gallery Sculptures  (video of the lecture in Slovenian)
11:30 Renata Komić Marn: In the Display Window. Grohar and Exhibiting 1900–1910
11:50 Alessandro Quinzi: 110th Anniversary of “Intimate Exhibition” in Gorizia  (video of the lecture in Slovenian)
12:10 Panel discussion

Exhibiting in Interwar Period
Chair: Asta Vrečko

13:10 Hana Čeferin, Jera Krečič, Neža Lukančič, Lara Mejač, Ana Obid: Jakopič Pavilion and International Exhibition Activity between 1919 and 1945 (video of the lecture in Slovenian)
13:30 Vesna Krmelj: The Role of the Ljubljana Grand Fair in the Development of Exhibition Activity in Slovenia between the Two World Wars
13:50 Tamara Bjažić Klarin: International Appearances of Men and Women Architects of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia in the 1920s and 1930s
14:10 Panel discussion

Exhibiting in the Second Yugoslavia I
Chair: Beti Žerovc

16:00 Gregor Dražil: Different Models of Printmaking. Alternatives to the Ljubljana Biennial of Graphic Arts in Yugoslavia (video of the lecture in Slovenian)
16:20 Wiktor Komorowski: “Graphic Art is Unruly”. Polish Participation at the Ljubljana Biennial of Graphic Arts 1955–1989 (video of the lecture)
16:40 Giovanni Rubino: Serigraphy at the Time of its Democratic Multiplication. Examples of Italian Art in Yugoslavia around 1968 (video of the lecture )
17:00 Sanja Horvatinčić: Monuments on Display. International Exhibitions of Yugoslav Memorial Production (video of the lecture)
17:20 Panel discussion

Friday, 22 April 2022

Exhibiting in the Second Yugoslavia II
Chair: Martina Malešič

9:00 Asta Vrečko: Exhibiting American Art in Slovenia in the 1960s (video of the lecture in Slovenian)
9:20 Nadja Zgonik: Adria Art Gallery (1967–69), a Sales Gallery of Yugoslav Fine Arts in New York, or How Socialist Art Set Out to Conquer the Western Market (video of the lecture in Slovenian)
9:40 Cvetka Požar, Maja Vardjan: Exhibitions of Model Apartments as a Starting Point for a New Living Culture (video of the lecture in Slovenian)
10:00 Katarina Hergold Germ: Peace 75–30 UN. Out of the Box Exhibition (video of the lecture in Slovenian)
10:20 Panel discussion

Expansion of Art Institutions around Slovenia after World War II
Chair: Katarina Mohar
11:20 Miha Colner: Exhibition Activity at Lamut’s Art Salon (video of the lecture in Slovenian)
11:40 Meta Kordiš: Rotovž Exhibition Salon, Maribor (video of the lecture in Slovenian)
12:00 Teja Merhar: The Archives Department, Museum of Modern Art, Ljubljana (video of the lecture in Slovenian)
12:20 Panel discussion

Exhibiting of Contemporary Art I  
Chair: Vladimir Vidmar
14:00 Christophe Barbeau: The Curator’s Rooms (video of the lecture)
14:20 Emi Finkelstein: Revising the Museum. Exhibiting Moderna galerija’s Arteast 2000+ in Berlin (video of the lecture)
14:40 Ivana Meštrov, Ksenija Orelj: Exhibiting Museum Collections in Times of Hyper-Production – Merging Traditional and Experimental Approaches (video of the lecture)
15:00 Panel discussion

Exhibiting of Contemporary Art II  
Chair: Urška Jurman

16:00 Neja Kaiser: Exhibiting Performance in Slovenia. The Case of Body and the East Exhibition (video of the lecture in Slovenian)
16:20 Kaja Kraner: The Online Exhibition as Medium. Between Democratisation and a Reflection on the Logic of the Digital (video of the lecture in Slovenian)
16:40 Petja Grafenauer, Nataša Ivanović: Works of Art in the Context of the Protest Movement 2020/2021 (video of the lecture in Slovenian)
17:00 Panel discussion

The symposium is free of charge; it is held in Slovene and English.

The symposium is being organized in cooperation with: the Museum and Galleries of Ljubljana, the Igor Zabel Association for Culture and Theory, the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art Koroška, and the Božidar Jakac Art Museum as well as the France Stele Institute of Art History (the Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts, ZRC SAZU), and the Department of Art History, Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana as part of the research project Exhibiting of Art and Architecture between Artistic and Ideological Concepts. Case Study of Slovenia, 1947–1979 (J6-3137).

The symposium is financially supported by Slovenian Research Agency (ARRS) and the ERSTE Foundation.