bio | Zdenka Badovinac is a curator and writer, who served from 1993 to 2020 as director of the Moderna galerija in Ljubljana, comprised since 2011 of two locations: the Museum of Modern Art and the Museum of Contemporary Art Metelkova. In 2022 she was appointed a director of the Museum of Contemporary in Zagreb. In her work, Badovinac deals with historicisation of Eastern European art and situated institutionality. She also initiated the first Eastern European art collection, Arteast 2000+ in Moderna galerija, Ljubljana. Her recent exhibitions are NSK from Kapital to Capital: Neue Slowenische Kunst – The Event of the Final Decade of Yugoslavia, Moderna galerija, 2015 (which travelled to the Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven in 2016, Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, Moscow in 2016, and the Museo Reina Sofía Madrid in 2017); NSK State Pavilion, 57th Venice Biennale, 2017, co-curated with Charles Esche; The Heritage of 1989. Case Study: The Second Yugoslav Documents Exhibition, Modena galerija, Ljubljana, 2017, co-curated with Bojana Piškur; Sites of Sustainability Pavilions, Manifestos and Crypts, Hello World. Revising a Collection, Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum für Gegenwart – Berlin, 2017; Heavenly Beings: Neither Human nor Animal, Museum of Contemporary Art Metelkova, Ljubljana, co-curated with Bojan Piškur, 2018; Bigger Than Myself: Heroic Voices from Ex-Yugoslavia, MAXXI, Rome. (2020); and Sanja Iveković, Works of Heart (1974-2022), Kunsthalle, Vienna, (2022). Her most recent books are Unannounced Voices: Curatorial Practice and Changing Institutions (Sternberg Press / Thoughts on Curating), 2022 and Comradeship: Curating, Art, and Politics in Post-Socialist Europe (Independent Curators International (ICI), New York, 2019. She is a founding member of L’Internationale, a confederation of seven modern and contemporary European art institutions, and president of CIMAM, the International Committee for Museums and Collections of Modern Art, 2010–13.
