Unrealised Plečnik’s parliament on its way to MoMA, New York
The exhibition Toward a Concrete Utopia: Architecture in Yugoslavia, 1948–1980, which is being prepared in The Museum of Modern Art, New York, will also feature an iconic item from the Plečnik collection: a model of the unrealised Slovenian parliament, Plečnik’s Cathedral of Freedom.
Blaž Peršin, Director of the Museum and Galleries of Ljubljana: “The original Cathedral of Freedom model is one of the most iconic items from the Plečnik collection kept in the Museum and Galleries of Ljubljana. To us, cooperation with the Museum of Modern Art from New York is of exceptional importance due to the MoMA’s crucial position in disseminating the knowledge of modern and contemporary fine art at the global level. In this light, our cooperation undoubtedly makes an essential contribution to the dispersion of the importance of Plečnik’s legacy for the development of modernist architecture in Yugoslavia at the time. Plečnik was professor to many architects, including Edvard Ravnikar, one of the main figures of new movements in the country. And the Cathedral of Freedom will be emphasised as the origin of conceptualisation and consideration of what it means to create an architectural vision of new, sometimes also uncompromising starting points.”
The exhibition in MoMA is based on a cooperation of almost 50 researchers and curators, and six organisations from the area of former Yugoslavia. In 2010, they formed ties between them for the project Unfinished modernisations. The exhibition will comprise more than 400 drawings, photographs, models, mock-ups and film recordings. Plečnik’s work will be exposed as the vision of a professor who exerted a strong influence on the coming generations of architecture students, with particular emphasis on the share of Edvard Ravnikar. The other two Slovenian contributors to the exhibition are Museum of Architecture and Design, Ljubljana, and Maribor Art Gallery.