BALKAN DISKURS (23/12/2015)
“If you are looking for hell, ask the artist where it is. If you don’t find the artist, then you are already in hell,” wrote Avigdoor Pawsner in 1793. Two hundred years later, the Bosnian artist Dean J. Toumin quoted Pawsner during the war in Sarajevo. Pawsner’s words now welcome visitors to the Ars Aevi museum.
The idea for a contemporary art museum came to Enver Hadžiomerspahić on the night of 27 April 1992, during the shelling of the Museum of the Olympic Games in Sarajevo. The project gained momentum as a result of people’s reactions to the religious and ethnic divisions during the war.
“It was insane to speak about building a museum of contemporary art in those days, during those weeks and months in which none of us knew if we were going to be alive the next day,” says Enver Hadžiomerspahić, responsible for the conception and strategies of the Ars Aevi project. Together with local artists, and with official support from key figures in Sarajevo, Enver invited the world’s leading artists to contribute to the collection (…)
Read more: https://balkandiskurs.com/en/2015/12/23/ars-aevi-a-museum-for-peace/