Museum of Contemporary Art of Republika Srpska
Description
The Museum of Contemporary Art of Republika Srpska is the central museum institution for contemporary art in RS, located in the old Austro-Hungarian railway station from 1891 at Trg srpskih junaka 2 in Banja Luka. The building was declared a national monument of Bosnia and Herzegovina in 2007.
The museum was founded in 1971 as the Art Gallery, created from a donation of around 800 works by Yugoslav and international artists in solidarity with Banja Luka after the devastating 1969 earthquake. Today, the collection includes more than 1,600 works in four collections: painting, prints and works on paper, sculptures, objects and installations, and media art. The museum is the organizer of the Bosnia and Herzegovina Pavilion at the Venice Biennale, the recipient of the international Živa award in 2014, and a member of ICOM. Admission is free, and the museum is open every day from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m.
The building and the origin of the collection
Few museums in the region have such an unusual origin story as MSU RS. The collection was not acquired over the years — it was donated all at once in 1969, as an act of solidarity with Banja Luka devastated by a powerful earthquake.
Yugoslav and international painters, sculptors and art historians donated around 800 works to the city struck by disaster. Two years later, the museum was founded on that donation. And the building itself — the Austro-Hungarian railway station from 1891, adapted into a museum in 1981 — was declared a national monument, which means the vessel is just as historic as its contents.
What to visit in the museum?
