The Museum of Contemporary Art is the name for Zagreb Municipal Galleries. Museum of Contemporery Art presents twelve thousand contemporary artworks.
What to expect
About twelve thousand contemporary artworks
Walk through the Zagreb Museum of Contemporary Art
The Zagreb Museum of Contemporary Art was founded in 1954. andis the present-day name for Zagreb Municipal Galleries, which formerly consisted of the Contemporary Art Gallery, the Centre for Photography, Film, and Television, and the Benko Horvat Collection, Library, and Documentation Department. Prior to its separation, the institution also included Atelier Meštrović (today's Meštrović Foundation), the Primitive Art Gallery (Croatian Museum of Naive Art), and the "Jozo Kljaković" Collection (now managed by Centre for Visual Art Education).
The collections of the Museum include some twelve thousand contemporary artworks. Most of the Museum's collection consists of Croatian and international artists who were active after 1950. It also includes various donations made to the City of Zagreb. In 2006, the Museum of Contemporary Art came into possession of the Tošo Dabac Archive. Many artworks from the Museum's collection belong to the international movement of New Tendencies, founded at the Museum in 1961, which testifies to Zagreb's role as one of the most interesting European art centres of the time. Five events organized by the Museum before 1973 featured numerous outstanding artists such as Victor Vasarely, Jesus Raphael Soto, Julio Le Parc, Otto Piene, and Zero Group, as well as influential artists and theoreticians such as Abraham Moles and Umberto Eco.
After many years of effort invested in securing an adequate space for the Museum of Contemporary Art, either by remodelling the existing building or by constructing a new one, a decision was made in 1998 in favour of the latter option. The new location was set in Novi Zagreb, at the crossroads of Većeslav Holjevac and Dubrovnik Avenues. The new building opened on December 11th 2010. Respecting the tradition of functionalist architecture, Igor Franić designed a building that extends in a north-south direction, continuing the orientation of the Zagreb Green Horseshoe.
The ground floor is entirely intended for the visitors – it contains the museum shop, children’s workshop, library with a reading hall, a minor exhibition space, restaurant, and a multimedia hall. The exhibition rooms are located on the upper floors of the Museum, constructed in a meander-like form. Multifaceted as they are, they make it possible to enlarge, diminish, and intertwine the permanent collection and the temporary exhibitions, and are suitable for exhibiting and presenting even the most demanding exhibition projects.
Every first Wednesday in a month: Free admission for all visitors