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Narrating Ars Aevi Re-Envisioning and Re-Shaping the Contemporary Art Museum of Sarajevo in the Urban Space

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Narrating Ars Aevi Re-Envisioning and Re-Shaping the Contemporary Art Museum of Sarajevo in the Urban Space Corso di Laurea magistrale in Economia e Gestione delle Arti e delle Attività Culturali Tesi di Laurea Narrating Ars Aevi Re-envisioning and Re-shaping the Contemporary Art Museum of Sarajevo in the Urban Space Relatore Ch. Prof. Michele Tamma Correlatori Ch. Prof. Daniele Goldoni Ch. Prof. Lauso Zagato Laureanda Silvia Maria Carolo Matricola 827921 Anno Accademico 2015 / 2016 Foreword ____________________________________________________________ 1 Chapter 1: Introduction _________________________________________________ 4 1.1 Museogenesis ____________________________________________________________ 4 1.2 Sarajevo: Historical Background & City Profile ______________________________ 5 1.3 Culture in Post-Dayton BiH _______________________________________________ 8 1.4 Re-imagining & Reshaping the Museum ____________________________________ 15 1.4.1 Three typologies, three phases ________________________________________________ 15 1.4.2 Still pending the museum ____________________________________________________ 17 1.4.3 Working Hypothesis ________________________________________________________ 19 1.4.4 Methodology ______________________________________________________________ 20 Chapter 2: Museum boundaries are getting weak: towards the physical dissemination ___________________________________________________________________ 24 2.1 Boundaries in museums: metaphors and tangible fences ______________________ 24 2.1.1 Introduction _______________________________________________________________ 24 2.1.2 Times of revolution _________________________________________________________ 26 2.1.3 Towards democratization ____________________________________________________ 27 2.2 New heritages, new expansions ____________________________________________ 29 2.2.1 An expanding patrimonialization ______________________________________________ 29 2.2.2 Ecomuseums ______________________________________________________________ 31 2.2.3 City museums _____________________________________________________________ 33 2.2.4 Participation ______________________________________________________________ 35 2.2.5 Museum & Identity: old and new barriers _______________________________________ 35 2.3 Museums in the urban space ______________________________________________ 38 2.3.1 Physical dissemination and mobility in contemporary museographical practices _________ 38 2.3.2 The museum in/is the urban space: iconic buildings, museum clusters _________________ 40 2.4 What is going on in the urban space? ______________________________________ 44 2.4.1 Public Art ________________________________________________________________ 45 2.4.2 Outdoor cultural life ________________________________________________________ 47 Chapter 3: Case-study – Part I __________________________________________ 49 3.1 “SARAJEVO 2000”: Museum & Art Media Center in the army headquarters as a symbol of art‟s victory over destruction _______________________________________ 49 3.1.1 Introduction _______________________________________________________________ 49 3.1.2 Premises _________________________________________________________________ 50 3.1.3 SARAJEVO 2000 __________________________________________________________ 51 3.1.4 Towards the museological framework __________________________________________ 54 3.2 En route: founding-exhibitions around Italy & Europe _______________________ 63 3.3 The growing collection – Anticipations _____________________________________ 68 Chapter 4: Case-study – Part II _________________________________________ 78 4.1 The Complex of Pavilions scattered through the urban tissue as „Expression of International Collective Will‟ ________________________________________________ 78 4.1.1 Introduction _______________________________________________________________ 78 4.1.2 Reshaping the museum: from barracks to ARS AEVI Millennium Complex ____________ 79 4.2 ARS AEVI Millennium Complex within the (multi)cultural rebuilding context ___ 87 4.3 Ars Aevi: the cultural organization ________________________________________ 99 4.3.1 Project, Foundation, Associations ______________________________________________ 99 4.3.2 From ‗virtual museum‘ to Ars Aevi Art Depot ___________________________________ 103 Chapter 5: Case-study – Part III ________________________________________ 112 5.1 Ars Aevi today: the museum district as a development driver? ________________ 112 5.1.1 Introduction ______________________________________________________________ 112 5.1.2 ‗Ars Aevi in progress‘ ______________________________________________________ 113 5.1.3 Renzo Piano‘s museum within the museum cluster in Marijin Dvor, Sarajevo __________ 120 5.1.4 Glimmers. New perspectives ________________________________________________ 133 5.2 The role of the Embassy of Italy in BiH: towards the rebirth? ________________ 137 Chapter 6: Conclusive considerations ___________________________________ 153 6.1 The framework ________________________________________________________ 153 6.2 The current scenario ___________________________________________________ 156 6.3 Re-envisioning and re-shaping Ars Aevi in the urban space___________________ 161 APPENDIX – INTERVIEWS __________________________________________ 170 REFERENCES _____________________________________________________ 173 Published Sources _________________________________________________________ 173 Ars Aevi Catalogues & Books _______________________________________________ 179 Unpublished Sources ______________________________________________________ 181 Web Sources _____________________________________________________________ 182 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS _____________________________________________ 185 Foreword The idea of disseminating the existing Ars Aevi Collection through the urban tissue of Sarajevo has been present since the beginning of my study. The attempt is that of hypothesizing the alternative reformulation of a longstanding museum project which is finding it difficult to achieve an enduring realization. Being awarded with the Venice International University Scholarship for Research Internships and Worldwide Mobility I spent a three-month-long period in Sarajevo, where I carried out my research at the offices of the International Cultural Project - Museum of Contemporary Art Sarajevo - ARS AEVI. Even before my journey in the heart of the Balkans – to be precise, when my knowledge on the case was still extremely superficial – that idea had been already considered and outlined as an interesting starting point for both the reconstruction and the interpretation of the case. In this vein, I tried to tell the 24-year-old history of the Ars Aevi museum project born under the siege of Sarajevo, by constantly searching for details and clues on scattered practices. The idea of reshaping Ars Aevi as a spread activity in the urban space with the consequent dissemination of its (existing) collection brought me to reflect upon the concept of museum form and typology. In this way I then discovered – going further inside into Ars Aevi developments – that the museum project itself has been re- envisioned and reshaped more times over the years, since 1992 up to the present. Even though the Ars Aevi history is commonly linked with the museum building designed by Renzo Piano in the early 2000s, what emerged by researching on field is the story of a different and more articulated phenomenology of museum ‗shaping - re-envisioning - reshaping‘. I came across other museum forms and typologies, therefore other ways to conceive Ars Aevi, which over the years have been formulated, changed, re-envisaged and reshaped, in the founders‘ minds and visions. The everyday contact with the Project staff and their stories, as well as the study of the several Ars Aevi exhibition catalogues, curatorial statements, unpublished sources and documents (at my disposal at the Ars Aevi head office) made an in-depth insight into the Project dynamics possible. They thus directed my research towards the 1 understanding of the case through ‗forms‘, in other words, considering the sequence of museum typologies that from time to time have been imagined and re-thought for Ars Aevi. The typologies themselves then became the starting point to narrate and analyze the case. By dividing the narration according to the (re-envisioned and reshaped) museum typologies, I identified corresponding phases where contexts, social actors, and even historical, geopolitical shifts could be narrated by means of the museum typologies themselves. The highly interdisciplinary narration that has resulted is due to the mixture of approaches employed. Museological and museographical practices and models; literature on cultural activities; social, political and international sciences; curatorial statements, art catalogues and art publications. Their joint action enabled the emphasization of narratives, contents, symbolic charges that the envisioned museum typologies have from time to time expressed and communicated. The aspect of physical dissemination is incorporated into the narration. It is a recurring element in the analysis of the (re)envisaged Ars Aevi typologies, for instance we can find it in the formulation of a complex of pavilions twisting and turning through the urban tissue – as illustrated in Chapter 4 – or in the meanings of the Ars Aevi Bridge, the first and only realized component of the complex. At the same time, the narration also includes the story of the Ars Aevi Project, namely, of the cultural organization that has operated in the last two decades offering a wide range of exhibitions
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