Yesterday, I visited the Museum of Contemporary Art New Belgrade (MoCAB). It was an interesting 30-minute walk from my apartment across the Sava River via windy Brankov Bridge.
The MoCAB building is a work of art itself. Founded in 1958, it was moved in 1965 to New Belgrade’s Ušće neighborhood. It’s near the “modernistic glass-and-steel Ušće Towers” and Ušće Shopping Center on the left bank of the Sava River. The symbolic location is at the confluence of the Sava and Danube Rivers.
The MoCAB is the “masterpiece of Serbian architects Ivanka Raspopović and Ivan Antić”. Today, it supposedly “contains over 8,000 works, representing the most relevant collection of Yugoslav art from 1900 – 1991″.
The museum is “surrounded by a small sculpture park with works of important Yugoslav sculptors of the 20th century“. The only exhibitions on display during my visit were interactive and multimedia works, including featured exhibitions – Preventive Peace by Italian artist Michelangelo Pistoletto and Ahead of Time and Beyond by Serbian artist and composer Vladan Radovanović.
The Pistoletto and Radovanović. exhibitions were interesting, but I was disappointed not to see any paintings and think the website is a bit misleading. It indicates the museum displays “paintings from 1900 by Serbian and Yugoslav artists,” and that was not the case. So far, I haven’t developed the need to physically interreact with art I view, so didn’t spend much relating to the interactive exhibits. Maybe it will come to me in time? The best part of the MoCAB outing was a walk in Ušće Park along the Sava River.
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“The Belgrade Museum of Contemporary Art collects and displays art works produced since 1900 in Serbia and Yugoslavia. It also organizes international exhibitions of modern and contemporary art.”
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Renovations
The MoCAB was closed between 2007 – 2017 for renovations required to meet building standards. Areas of Ušće Park near the museum were also reconstructed. In spring and summer, concerts are held in the park’s open air space.
Museum renovation “dragged on for a decade,” but the museum finally reopened to the public in 2017. An innovative glass dome is one of the museum’s unique design features. The “interactive dome has blue panels that change tone, depending on the weather and time of day”.
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“The Museum of Contemporary Art was designed by architects Ivanka Raspopović and Ivan Antić. Their project included six crystal-formed cubic modules placed on a rectangular base and rotated by 45 degrees with a tendency to be, theoretically, multiplied in the future.” EUmiesaward
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Exhibitions
Exhibitions and collections in the museum are listed below – except there were no paintings on display during my visit, and the only sculptures were outside:
- Paintings before and after 1945 – huh??
- Graphics, Prints, and Paintings of Serbian and Yugoslav painters, plus a foreign collection of 323 works – not really
- Sculptures including 752 works by Ivan Meštrović and others – huh??
- New Art Media
Nadežda Petrović
I missed a recent exhibition, Colors of Life, featuring the works of “one of the most important female Serbian painters, Nadežda Petrović“. Interesting Petrović was a “pioneer of modernism and one of the founders of 20th century Serbian modernist painting“. She died in April 2024.
Preventive Peace Michelangelo Pistoletto
Through September 2024, the MoCAB is hosting the exhibition – Preventive Peace by Michelangelo Pistoletto. Pistoletto is a prominent Italian contemporary artist. The Pistoletto exhibition is “part of the Birčaninova@100 initiative, marking the 100th anniversary of the Italian Embassy in Belgrade“.
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“Great protagonist of Italian Arte Povera, Michelangelo Pistoletto, whose artistic practice has always been deeply linked to society, embodies the beauty of the contrast of everyday life and teaches us to see beyond the materiality of things.” ZR
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Ahead of Time and Beyond Vladan Radovanović
In March, the Contemporary Art Museum opened a retrospective exhibition – Ahead of Time and Beyond – by Vladan Radovanović. Recently deceased, multimedia artist Radovanović is also “one of Serbia’s most important domestic contemporary composers“.
The exhibition is an overview of his “creativity and importance in avant-garde Serbian art of the 20th and 21st century”. In the mid-1950s, Radovanović “introduced innovative and radical concepts into Serbia’s artistic environment“.
Although the visit to the MoCAB wasn’t quite what I expected, I learned a lot! :o) Some beautiful paintings by Serbian masters Nadežda Petrović and Kosta Miličević are attached.