By presenting prominent Croatian and international artists of the 20th
century, the exhibition “Futures” challenges the ideas and visions of
the future which have been developing in art from the 1960s until the
present day. Croatian artists gathered around the New Tendencies
movement connected art, science and technology with the then idea of a
progressive socialist society. This was also embraced by international
artists who exhibited as part of New Tendencies, thereby showing their
interest in Yugoslavia and their trust in the new, self-governing
system.
The second half of the exhibition mostly presents contemporary works
that take on an active attitude towards the future. The necessity of
mending the relationship towards nature as well as social relations,
damaged by constant progress and growth, is accentuated. Deceleration
and degrowth are the two conditions for having any future at all.
However, the alternatives often also grow, merely serving the progress
of the “First World” while based on the exploitation of the people and
the country, exclusion, patriarchy, annihilation of animal species, and
the (post)colonialism of the Western world.
These artworks primarily testify of changes in the social imaginarium
– from ideas and values of modernity, based on the logic of progress
and development, to caring for the community and the planet, all the way
to the awareness of mutual interdependency and necessity of
self-organisation.
In lieu of despair accompanying the different dystopian visions of
the future – which is more or less justified when facing the growing
environmental crisis, wars in Europe and across the world, and the
unresolved refugee crisis – this exhibition seeks to raise awareness of
the importance of our active role in salvaging our own future.
The exhibition “Futures” is set up in the hall and the first floor of
the Museum, which have been spatially and architecturally reorganised
for this purpose. This exhibition also presents a new, open space of the
Museum, which now enables the visitors to encounter the masterpieces
from the Museum holdings – the major and important works of contemporary
art of Croatia and the world – at the very entrance.