Open call - the archive of the Every Man is a Curator / Jeder Mensch ist ein Kurator project

Dear visitors, friends and colleagues, dear Mr. President, dear Prime Minister, dear Cabinet Ministers, and dear leaders of political parties in parliement!

Five years ago, Moderna galerija finally saw the start of renovation work on its rundown main building; no substitute venue or funding for an exhibition program was provided for the interim period. The financing of the renovation was used as an excuse for not financing the museum's exhibition activities. In response to this, we threw the museum doors wide open one last time in the final weeks before the actual reconstruction work began, organizing an exhibition without any financial means whatsoever. We called it "Every Man is a Curator / Jeder Mensch ist ein Kurator". Offering only our exhibition premises, we invited "artists, curators, critics, students, children, working people - all our visitors and everyone else interested in the future of Moderna galerija to take part in its makeover by becoming members of a 'Society of Independent Curators'." All were free to bring whatever they wanted to and install it wherever and in whatever way they felt was most appropriate. Over 100 people responded to our call, and their contributions remained on view until the museum was finally closed. The exhibition also served as a kind of public forum where people could exchange their views on Slovenia's then cultural politics.

Last year, when our new Museum of Contemporary Art Metelkova opened, we saw a similar situation play out once again: although we now had twice the exhibition space we had when the museum was operating in a single building, we did not receive funding for the exhibitions program in the new building. For this reason we have decided to revive the memory of that earlier tense moment in the history of our institution and present the archive of our Every Man is a Curator / Jeder Mensch ist ein Kurator project at the Dear Art exhibition, in which the guest curators WHW are giving emphasis to self-reflection in art and are questioning its role by challenging its prevalent models and debunking its myths.

We are making our project topical once again by inviting you to contribute your commentary on the role of the museum in the present-day situation of the economic crisis, and offer your suggestions on how a new museum might operate without funding.
For further insight we are attaching our original call from 2007, a year that seems to have heralded the present situation. Dear Art opens on 29th November at 8 p.m. at the Museum of Modern Art Metelkova, and runs through 10th February 2013.

Please send your comments and proposals to: Moderna galerija, Tomšičeva 14, 1000 Ljubljana, or to: info@mg-lj.si.

We look forward to your constructive suggestions and creative contributions.

Yours sincerely,

Zdenka Badovinac
Director
Moderna galerija