The MSUB gives up the cafe on the ground floor
The Museum of Contemporary Art in Belgrade (MSUB) gave up the idea of a cafe on the ground floor, after the Cultural Monument Protection Institute of Belgrade, after being called upon by the Ministry of Culture and Information of Serbia, determined that these were renovations for which no consent was obtained.
The acting director of the MSUB, Viktor Kis, who initiated the construction of the cafe and, for doing so, received strong reactions from the curatorial team and the professional public, said that everything was returning to its original state.
After the removal of Zoran Todorovic's artwork "The Heat" from the ground floor of the MSUB for the construction of a cafe had provoked strong opposition from the curatorial team and condemnation from the professional public, the Minister of Culture and Information Maja Gojkovic called upon the competent Cultural Monument Protection Institute to determine the exact situation on the field. The Cultural Monument Protection Institute ordered the MSUB to "return everything to its original state within seven days".
The MSUB is, by the way, considered to be one of the most significant achievements of domestic architecture, the first purpose - built museum building in Belgrade, and its authors Ivan Antic and Ivanka Raspopovic received the October Award for Architecture in 1965.
The wish of the acting director of the MSUB, as he stated, was "only to enable a more pleasant stay for the visitors in the museum, and to provide a place for rest with a coffee and water vending machine, which will be separated from the exhibition space by the mentioned glass screen".
Due to the construction of the cafe, the work "The Heat" by Zoran Todorovic which is a part of the exhibition of acquisitions of the MSUB, and was once presented at the Venice Biennale, was removed from the ground floor.
*Photo: The Heat, Zoran Todorović
(SEEcult.org)
*Support: International Relief Fund of the German Federal Foreign Office, the Goethe-Institut, and other partners
