The Museum of Contemporary Art, Belgrade: Aesthetics and Cultural Technology

The 1965 Museum of Contemporary Art in Belgrade (MoCAB) assumed multiple roles: to legitimize art practices from this region as a multinational institutional structure; to promote art outside Yugoslav borders through Biennales in Venice, Sao Paolo, Paris, and Tokyo; and, perhaps most importantly, to operate as ‘cultural technology.' In 1987, the museum attained the role of a cultural good protected by the Cultural Monument Protection Institute. In 1999, it was damaged during NATO’s Operation Allied Force. Its reconstruction was marked with an exhibition called “Sequences” in 2017. By analyzing the architecture and art exhibitions of the MoCAB, this chapter explores the extent to which the museum creates the opportunity for not just redistribution but interruption of the accepted rhetoric of the hegemonic order associated with the political mechanization of privileged Western aesthetic production, including the globalized and franchised culture industry.