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A retrospective exhibition of the Studio of Young Artists

Budapest Gallery, 19 October 2016.  – 8 January 2017.

The exhibition surveyed the past and the roles of the Studio of Young Artists from its establishment until the political transformations of 1989. The history of this distinctive institution of the Kádár regime emerged through the presentations of archival material, exhibition documents, publications, posters, photographs, and original artworks.

The first part diaplayed documents of the collective surveys organized in prominent and symbolically important locations beginning in the early 1960s, as well as the solo and smaller group shows organized from the 1970s onwards in the Studio Gallery.

The second half of the exhibition consisted of a selection from the Studio Collection comprised of works created by former members of the organization. The selection on display (organized into thematic sections) focused on forgotten and unfamiliar sounding names and unusual, atypical works, thus casting a fresh glance on this heterogenuous collection, which deserves a better fate.

As a part of the twenty-fifth anniversary of Croatia’s independence, and in cooperation with and under the auspices of the Croatian Parliament, in June through August 2016 the Croatian State Archives organized an exhibition entitled “The Historical Role of the Croatian Parliament in Preserving Croatian Statehood.” The exhibition was divided into four units, for which the last one “Securing Independence for the Republic of Croatia, 1990–1992” also made use of materials held in Vjesnik Newspaper Documentation collection, from the domestic affairs category.

As part of a joint project between the National Library and the Atelier Ab Publishing House in January 2016, a series of creative meetings called "Gallery of Words" was held at the National Library. Poets and writers, artists and musicians, publishers and philosophers present their work. Among them were the former dissidents, poets and writers Vladimir Levchev and Edvin Sugarev, both of them publisher of samizdat magazines from the late 1980s, whose publications are included in the Forbidden Newspaper collection. A major part of the debate was devoted to the time of state socialism and the forms of resistance.