The New Collection Project: Playground – NUA Treći Beograd
NEW COLLECTION is an educational and creative project, targeted at students of Art and Art History from Belgrade and Novi Sad. It has developed through several phases over the course of 2014. The project gathered around 120 students of Art and Art History around the following issue: what are the consequences of the situation in which some of the most referential institutions for contemporary art, such as the Museum of Contemporary Art in Belgrade, operate in limited capacity and their collections are entirely unavailable to public for over several years now. Students got to partake in lectures, and then 37 of them embarked upon conceiving and producing around 30 artworks with the help of their mentors, artists and professors: Žolt Kovač, Miloš Tomić, Ljubomir Vučinić, Olivera Parlić, Anica Vučetić and Radoš Antonijević.
The newly produced works directly question and critically address artistic production and education in Serbia and organically find their place in one of the six exhibition concepts within New Collection. The exhibitions are conceptualized by a group of Art History students, supported by their mentor – independent curator, Maja Ćirić.
The concepts and artwork produced during the New Collection project do not pertain to become a part of any institutional collection, but serve as documents in time showing the positions and conclusions of a whole new generation of artists and curators. Apart from the experience of artistic production and curating, one of the most relevant aspects of the New Collection is networking among students, the future actors of the local art scene.
Photo: U10