The Next Step conference

9-10 May Ljubljana

In Ljubljana has just finnished the inernational conference of museums of modern and contemporary art organized by Moderna Galerija. Its title refers to the state of affairs brought about by the rapid globalization and the growing doubts concerning the universality of the Western canon of art history.
The conference appears at the moment when virtually all principal museums in the region are closed for renovation or (re)construction.. Could this be the right moment for them to think about a new type of museum based on the production of knowledge on still-uncanonized histories?
The other questions proposed deal with the work of the museums under global economic crisis and the loooming financial restrictions, and the course of action to be adopted when new spaces are opening up whose art has not yet been integrated into existing canon.
The speakers from the institutions such as Reina Sofia, Centre Pompidou and Tate Modern were involved in the first panel discussion Include or change? that showed that two courses of action seem possible at the moment: one leads to the Other being merely subsumed into the existing art history system, and the other presumes the recognition of a need for a different approach to historicizing which would lead to a global transformation of the workings of the art system and the conception of the museum collections. It seems that all of them opted for the first possibility.
What is happening to the principal museum institutions in the region of former Yugoslavia were trying to respond the speakers from the museums of contemporary art in Belgrade, Skopje, Sarajevo, Zagreb and Ljubljana's Moderna Galerija.
The next question focused on the museum's original significance as a place of study and knowledge production and dissemination in the times of a neo-liberal economy and the global economic crisis, to which Charles Esche, Nina Möntman and Sabine Breitwieser were able to respond best and finish with lively discussion the first day of the conference at around eight o'clock in the evening.
On sunday followed the debate around the legacy of the museums in the countries of formerly repressive political regimes and the future they face based on the examples of Brasil, Poland and Eastern Germany. Museums in countries that used to be relatively isolated seem especially interested in including their local art in international context. How can this international context, specific yet global at the same time, in regions such as South America or Eastern Europe be problematized?
The final word was given to the artists who were asked to show how artists can help make histories presented by the museums more comprehensive.
Irwin quoted from their project East Art Map, which is an attempt to re-construct the art history from Eastern Europe of the last fifty years. Silvia Kolbowski presented her project an inadequate history of conceptual art, Tadej Pogacar his P.A.RA.S.I.T.E Museum of Contemporary Art and Gediminas Urbonas a winning entry for Guggenheim in Vilnius, a space ship by Zaha Hadid.
Artist on the move, Apolonija Sustersic talked about her own practice related to the critical analyses of space, and the processes and relationships between institutions, cultural politics, urban planning and architecture.