Excuse me, where is the Museum of Contemporary Art?

This is a project related to the opening of a new building of the Zagreb Museum of Contemporary Art. We designed the cover of the culture magazine Zarez with the photograph of Avenue Mall shopping center with the highlighted sign Excuse me, where is the Museum of Contemporary Art?

Namely, this popular shopping mall is located opposite the new Museum of Contemporary Art in Novi Zagreb, and thus symbolically raises questions over the status of contemporary museums in an emphasized consumer mentality.

Where can real art be found today? Where is that that excites us and provokes us emotionally and intellectually? On one side there is a museum and on the other side a shopping center – competition is inevitable. Will they become alike during this competition?

All over the world, museum shops are becoming bigger and bigger and are not only found in museums. Sometimes the museum shop offer is much more exciting than the museum setup. At the same time, shopping centers in addition to marketing assimilate other contents too, including art, either through a separate offer, or as an integral part of what is on the shelves.

Besides content, there are so many other formal similarities, architectural and communicational, between the new Museum of Contemporary Art and Avenue Mall shopping center. Large billboards that announced the opening of the Museum of Contemporary Art could have been easily mistaken for an opening of a new shopping mall by an uninformed foreigner. Despite the state aid, art is on its way back where it belongs – among the people.

Bruketa&Žinić OM / Davor Bruketa, Nikola Žinić (Creative Directors, Art Directors), Imelda Ramović, Mirel Hadžijusufović (Copywriters), Igor Miletić (Designer, Photographer)

2009