Centre of the World

The agreement reached in 1947 between MoMA and Metropolitan Museum was revoked in 1953 as MoMA decided that they no longer wanted to renounce the wealth they had acquired in the form of modern masterpieces, thus forsaking the concept of the museum developed by Alfred Barr in his 1933 “Torpedo moving through time” diagram. Since then, the collections of MoMA had grown immensely and the spaces that house them followed, starting with the acquisitions of the neighboring buildings in the years that followed.

Sponsored by the UN, Koroška galerija in Slovenj Gradec organized first in the series of international exhibitions titled “Peace, humanity and friendship among nations” in 1966. As the number of works that had arrived in the open call far surpassed the physical capacities of the gallery, the leadership of the Gallery decided that an extension to the museum should be built. Within the context of Socialist Slovenia (part of Yugoslavia), they were able to realize this with the help of the working brigades made up of the voluntary citizens of Slovenj Gradec, co-financed by the state-owned companies from the region in the course of 3 months. In the press of the time, unconcealed optimism boomed. The exhibition was to bring both the world to Slovenj Gradec and Slovenj Gradec to the world. One of the journalists states “These days our small Slovenj Gradec is the center of the world”.

If we decontextualize these events and view them as material processes the difference between MoMA and Koroška stories is only in scale. But while the growing of MoMA signifies a reactionary turn in the history of the institution the growth of Koroška signifies an emancipatory historical moment for the people of Slovenj Gradec materialized in an architectural form - a museum. Fokus Grupa revives this history of the museum and tries to increase it's visibility in the public space by realizing the neon sign based on the optimist discourse of the press from 1966. The work thus tries to both commemorate and propose that a different kind of museum is possible.

* translates SREDIŠČE SVETA in Slovenian

Details

technical info: neon sign
location: Slovenj Gradec, Slovenia
produced by: Koroška Gallery (opens in a new tab), 2016