Zdenka Badovinac Fired From Moderna Galerija by New Slovenian Government
Zdenka Badovinac was forced by Slovenia’s new right-wing government from her post as director of Ljubljana’s Moderna Galerija, a position held since 1993. The removal, announced in November and effective December 24, reflects an attempt on the part of the government, formed in March of this year, to implement a more conservative and nationalistic culture.
Badovinac is widely known for spearheading the development of Moderna Galerija, the region’s most prominent, and arguably most progressive, museum. Christened “the house that Zdenka built” by the late Okwui Enwezor, Moderna Galerija under Badovinac’s direction amassed the first institutional collection of postwar avant-garde Eastern European art and hosted groundbreaking shows such as 1998’s “Body and the East: From the 1960s to the Present,” which traveled to New York’s Exit Art, and 2003’s “2000+ Arteast Colle
For the past month, an open letter has been circulating among artists and academics in Slovenia. The letter, published on 17 November and currently bearing more than 1,000 signatures, denounces what it describes as the recently formed government’s repeated attempts to curtail cultural freedoms in the country over the past year. ‘The field of culture has been severely affected by the coronavirus epidemic, and it has been further affected by decisions at the Ministry of Culture that threaten living culture, cultural heritage, professionalism and autonomy of decision-making bodies and cultural institutions,’ the open letter reads.
The letter, addressed to the Minister of Culture Vasko Simoniti, criticises the government for its tactics in replacing two prominent museum directors in Ljubljana – Zdenka Badovinac, director of the Moderna Galerija since 1993, and Matevz Celik, director of the Museum of Architecture and Design since 2010 – despite their excellent international and