A series of lectures:Between a museum of Modern Art and a Museum of Contemporary Art at the Start of the 21st Century

26.06.2006

Kasper König, Carlos Basualdo

Monday, 26 June 2006, at 12 a.m. and at 5 p.m.
Moderna galerija, Ljubljana, Information center

You are cordially invited to attend the lectures delivered by Kasper König and Carlos Basualdo on Monday, 26 June 2006 at 12 a.m. and at 5 p.m. respectively in the Information Center at the Moderna galerija.

The presentation by Kasper König, the director of one of the foremost European art institutions, the Museum Ludwig in Cologne, opens2010-09-13 09:32:34 +0000 addressing the relationship between the museum of modern art and the museum of contemporary art. Moderna galerija is organizing these lectures as part of its reorganization into two units, a museum of modern art and a museum of contemporary art, and also due to the new and disparate suggestions concerning the possible use of the building at Metelkova 22.

In 1994, Moderna galerija was allotted the use of one of the buildings in the former Yugoslav Army barracks complex at Metelkova. In 2000, during the time of the Ljubljana edition of Manifesta, we used the not yet renovated building for the first public presentation of our Arteast Collection 2000+, which focuses predominantly on Eastern European art based on the traditions of the avant-garde. This presentation was also a harbinger of a new museum of contemporary art that was to evolve on the basis of the collection.

The allotment of a new building also suggested the division of the Moderna galerija into a Museum of Modern Art, which is to remain in the existing Moderna galerija building, and a Museum of Contemporary Art, to be housed in the allotted army barracks building at Metelkova. The founding of a special museum dedicated to contemporary art is further dictated by the fact that there is no major institution in Slovenia that is suitable for contemporary innovative practices and their traditions.

The program we have planned for the museum at Metelkova focuses on the new ways of presenting and interpreting contemporary art as well as on greater interdisciplinarity.

Kasper König has been the director of the Museum Ludwig in Cologne since 2000, and since 1988, a Professor at the Städelschule in Frankfurt. In addition to having curated a number of major exhibitions (e.g.. Claes Oldenburg, 1966; Andy Warhol , 1968) he has also conceived one of the most important cyclic sculpture events Skulptur Projekte Münster.

Carlos Basualdo, pa poet and art critic, currently works as a curator of contemporary art at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. He was a member of the team of curators at the last documenta 11 in 2002 and at the 50th Venice Biennale in 2003. He is known in Ljubljana as the guest curator of the Worthless/Invaluable exhibition staged at the Moderna galerija in 2000.