Comradeship collects 16 essays by the forward-thinking Slovenian
curator, museum director and scholar Zdenka Badovinac (born 1958).
Appointed director of Ljubljana's Museum of Modern Art in 1993 in the
wake of Slovenian independence, Badovinac has become an influential
voice in international conversations rethinking the geopolitics of art
after the fall of communism. She is a ferocious critic of unequal
negotiations between East and West and a leading historian of the
avant-garde art that emerged in socialist and post-socialist countries
at the end of the last century. One of the longest-serving and most
prominent museum directors in the region, Badovinac has pioneered
radical institutional forms to create a museum responsive to the
complexities of the past, and commensurate with the demands of the
present.
Collecting writing from disparate and hard-to-find sources, as well as
new work, this book offers a transformative perspective on a major
thinker. It is a crucial handbook of alternative approaches to curating
and institution-building in the 21st century. A dialogue between
Badovinac and art historian J. Myers-Szupinska introduces her history
and ideas.
Comradeship is the third book in the series Perspectives in Curating
by Independent Curators International.
"Whip smart, politically astute, curatorially inventive: Zdenka
Badovinac is nothing less than the most progressive and intellectually
rigorous female museum director in Europe. This anthology includes key
essays accompanying her series of brilliant exhibitions in Ljubljana,
and is essential reading for anyone interested in the differences
between former East and former West. For anyone seeking curatorial
alternatives to the neoliberal museum model of relentless expansion and
dumbed-down blockbusters, Badovinac is a galvanizing inspiration."
-Claire Bishop, author of Artificial Hells
