Permanent Collection
The Mestna galerija's permanent collection comprises 190 original works on paper by seventy Slovenian and sixty foreign artists. What distinguishes this collection is its recentness, the short time in which such a relatively large number of works was acquired, their specific character, and the fact that they have been, for the most part, donated. In the ten years we have been actively compiling this collection, we have managed to acquire works by all the major representatives of Slovenian art of the 20th century, works that portray their creative evolution. Our collecting policy has always been based on acquiring works by artists from different periods and styles of expression. The range is broad - from traditional, realistic portrayals of objective reality to fantasy and abstraction. Due to the heterogeneous character of the works and the diversity of the technical approaches, the collection is an important source in terms of research. Although it is internally coherent, its singular character offers a variety of possible approaches and diverse presentations in the form of surveys, subject-related selections or individual study segments, leading every time to new discoveries.

The concept of the collection grew out of the gallery's exhibition activities. Although the Mestna galerija Ljubljana has been actively staging exhibitions for forty years, it only started its collection in the 1990s. Instrumental in this was the exhibition of Denis Bowen, British painter and graphic artist, who was one of the founders of the New Vision Center, the first London gallery dedicated exclusively to abstract art. At the end of his show (November 2 - 21, 1992), he donated five works to the gallery. As a permanent collection is every museum or gallery's calling card, as it were, the Mestna galerija's desire to assemble its own collection with which to show its attitude towards the cultural heritage and articulate its position in relation to other institutions was understandable. The most feasible option was collecting original works on paper, where all techniques were acceptable except reproductive ones, that is, graphic prints. There were several reasons guiding the Mestna galerija Ljubljana in this choice: these are autonomous works of art, equal to works in other media; such works always receive due attention, regardless of the otherwise prevailing trends in art; the logistics of collecting, conserving and exhibiting such works are simpler. Last but not least, with this particular orientation, the Mestna galerija Ljubljana does not compete with the Mednarodni grafični likovni center (International Graphic Arts Center) or the Moderna galerija (Museum of Modern Art). This rationale has led to the project Between the Material and the Sublime, which presented a selection of ten Slovenian artists (Herman Gvardjančič, Janez Hafner, Zmago Jeraj, Dušan Kirbiš, Metka Krašovec, Lojze Logar, Franc Novinc, Dušan Podgornik, Ivo Prančič and Klavdij Tutta) and their works on paper at a traveling exhibition which toured South America. But a collection that only relies on random donations rather than on planned collecting can not be representative, and it grows very slowly. The gallery board was aware of this, and as a result it organized, with the help of the Alliance of the Associations of Slovenian Fine Artists, a scheme to assemble a permanent collection. Thus, members of the Associations donated their works to the gallery, arranged for the gallery to purchase them, or, to a lesser degree, loaned them to the gallery. The most important source of new acquisitions were donations by the artists; this was partly the result of the above-mentioned scheme, the others followed the example of Denis Bowen and donated one or more works to the gallery at the end of their shows. This singular feature of the Mestna galerija's collection was also mentioned in the 1997 report for the European Program of Assessing National Cultural Policies by Michael Wimmer, member of an expert European commission.

The first public display of the collection was staged on the premises at Mestni trg 4 on April 24, 1996 with the support of Tobačna tovarna Ljubljana d.o.o. and the municipality of Ljubljana. It was very well received, especially as the realization of another permanent collection in Slovenia. Fifty-nine artists each presented one work. In November 1996, the exhibition of the permanent collection was dismantled, to be staged again, in the same form and extent, in August and October 1997. The new, permanent collection premises at Mestni trg 4 proved to be a welcome addition to the gallery, and became a new exhibition space in the broadest sense of the word. The permanent collection was next put on display only in November 2002, as it had moved to another location in the meantime. The 2002 exhibition, titled Generation Parallels and New Acquisitions, presented fifty artists from all generations, from the oldest, Marij Pregelj and Valdimir Makuc, to the youngest, Silvester Plotajs-Sicoe, featuring a wide range of techniques, subjects and foreign works not previously exhibited.

We realize that exhibiting the permanent collection - even if only periodically - is the best way to present it to the public, but unfortunately it is often displaced by another of the numerous exhibition projects. However, one can now view the Mestna galerija's collection on our new web site.

Information
City Art Museum: Marina Mihelič Satler
phone: +386 1 2411 790
email: mestna.galerija-lj@siol.net

Location
The permanent collection premises are in a building quite close to the main gallery building.

Opening Hours

from September 1 to June 30: 10 a.m. - 6 p.m. Saturdays: 10 a.m. - 1 p.m. Mondays, public holidays: closed

from July 1 to August 31: 10 a.m. - 2 p.m., 5 p.m. - 8 p.m. Saturdays: 10 a.m. - 1 p.m. Mondays, public holidays: closed

foto 1: Blaž Samec
foto 2: D. Kracina

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