The Museum of Modern Art is Slovenia’s national museum dedicated to modern and contemporary art. Its main tasks are the collection, systematic research and presentation of 20th century Slovenian art, and the compilation of a major collection of Slovenian art, a selection of which is on permanent in display at the Museum.

Over the last five years the Museum of Modern Art has risen to prominence as one of the best institutions for visual art in Central and Eastern Europe. Its international programme and contemporary and inventive approach to the display of modern and contemporary art have in many ways changed the stereotype about dusty and poverty-ridden “Eastern institutions”. In the 1990s the Museum was host to numerous stars of the international art scene, many of whom told their colleagues and institutions of their positive experiences with the Museum. As a result the Museum is currently a “reference” location, with many important foreign artists expressing a desire to exhibit there. The greatest acknowledgement given to our work was the decision to hold Manifesta, the new European biennial of contemporary art, in Ljubljana in 2000. This is being co-ordinated in Ljubljana by one of the Museum’s curators, Igor Zabel.

Since Manifesta is one of the most important international contemporary art events, the Museum wishes to take the opportunity to present itself to the international public as the first museum to make a systematic collection of works by Eastern European artists. No such collection has so far appeared in a European museum, but what makes it invaluable is the ground-breaking idea of a redefinition of the history of art after the Second World War, a history which, in its present form, excludes almost half of Europe from international museum collections. The uniqueness of the Museum’s international collection could place Ljubljana and Slovenia on the European cultural map, just as the Venice Biennial has done for Italy and the Kassel Documenta for Germany.