Heritology

Museum has a special place in the power structure, and a special place in the structure of the city. My research shows that that place today is in the museum cluster. In the cluster, however, do not lie only the future and the development potentials of the museum, but the history of the city and the shifts of political and urbanistic ideologies can be read through it. The museum cluster represents an urbanistic, or an ideological manifesto, expressing the most elevated strivings in the construction of the city and of the image which a society wants to display about itself. It reflects urban models of different periods: the past ones, in reused representative buildings and complexes, and those prevailing at the time of their creation, in the clusters built specifically for that purpose. This conveys to the museum landscape they create an exceptional educational capacity, while constant changes in the museum cluster and in the use of its spaces, primarily public, increase the complexity of this issue and point out also the changes in the contemporary society and ideologies.

No cultural institution has experienced such a boom and similarly marked the end of the twentieth century as the museum, establishing itself as a tourist magnet, an architectural manifesto, and a symbol of the postmodern city and the culture in which we live. In this culture, the museum occupies a privileged place also physically, in the city. And not only does it occupy this place, but it creates it, defines it, changes it and gives it meaning. I argue that that place is in the museum cluster.

And in the cluster, the museum is changing; the meaning and the importance of its basic aspects are changing. My hypothesis is that in the museum project the (to)urbanistic aspect - its place and relationship with the city and the citizens, permanent or temporary - takes precedence over its museographic and architectonic aspect. The content - collection and display - and the architecture of the museum merge into the cultural density or touristic offer of the cluster, highlighting the place and urbanism of the museum in the foreground.

This place - the cluster - becomes a manifesto and an instrument of changes in the city and the society. It acquires new dimensions and roles, and provides the key to a new reading - not only of the museum, but also of the city - showing a profound shift in their relationship and in their conception. It reflects the intimate interaction of architecture, urbanism and tourism on different levels. New models of the museum-cluster, the cluster of museums and the "city of museums" represent different scales of a (to)urbanism that maximizes the use and impact of museums and public spaces between them - or more broadly, of the complete cultural infrastructure - in the mobilization and dissemination of culture and cultural information.

Drawing on the theory of the locus genii, I confirm the fundamental role of the museum cluster as a force that organizes, generates and transforms the museum system and the urban system. In the best tradition of the Grand Tour, this (to)urbanism, this “city of museums”, integrates tourism and didactic intentions, creating a new understanding and presentation of the cultural heritage – spatial (including the very urban structure), object (which spills from the museum into the pubic space) and symbolic – and making possible a transformation of the cities of past into the cities of future. It places new challenges also to the public space, as a three dimensional relational, educational and cultural space, demanding that it be the mediator in this transformation.

In our culture the museum occupies a privileged place symbolically, but also physically, in the city. And not only does it occupy it, but it creates it, defines it, changes it and gives it meaning. This thesis demonstrates that that place is in the museum cluster. And in the cluster, out of which it becomes almost impossible to contemplate the museum, the museum is changing; the meaning and the importance of its basic aspects are changing. My hypothesis is that in the museum project the urbanistic aspect – its place and relationship with the city – takes precedence over its museographic and architectonic aspect.

The content – collection and display – and the architecture of the museum merge into the cultural density of the cluster as the place of the museum, highlighting that place and urbanism in the foreground. The place – the cluster – thus becomes the key to a new reading of the museum and the city. Supporting the idea of multi-place, with multiple functions, meanings and audiences, the cluster is dismembered. It is considered as the physical location in the city, the urban form the cluster takes, the dynamics and relationships it establishes, and the public place which it creates in this interaction with the city.

Through a historical, comparative and critical analysis of these four dimensions of the place of museums, in the four chapters, the dissertation proves the hypothesis, as well as the theory of the locus genii, showing the fundamental role of the museum cluster as a force that organizes, generates and transforms the museum system and the urban system. It demonstrates that the museum boom, by creating, changing, and emphasizing museum clusters, represents a revolution in the relationship and conception of the museum and of the city.

From the museum cluster, a whole range of radical changes and innovations in the museum, in the very museum cluster and in the city is observed, through which is explained the primacy of the urbanistic aspect in the project of the museum, and the theory is extended to the importance of the museum aspect in the project of the city. The cluster of museums is raised in rank of the urban manifesto, showing that new models of the museum-cluster, the museum cluster and the "city of museums" are different scales or levels of an urbanism of densities and flows that maximizes the use and impact of museums and public spaces between them in the mobilization and dissemination of culture and cultural information.

Although the study includes a wider historical and geographic space to demonstrate the extension of this still little investigated and insufficiently well-known phenomenon, the accent is on the transformations of the museums and their clusters and systems during last three decades, in the principal European cities, including also the remarkable cases from other continents that suggest the possible directions of a future development.

Key words: museum cluster, contemporary city, public space

In its intensive development in recent decades, the museum has become a symbol of industrialization of culture and culturalisation of social life, economy and urban planning. Not only has it taken the place of industry in the post-modern city – functionally, and often also physically, in abandoned industrial complexes, but it has gradually adopted its spatial behavior and logic of clustering and networking too, which is the subject of my research. After extensive doctoral study on the global phenomenon of museum clusters and networks, in this study I focused on their potential in the region that effectively bypassed the museum boom, and instead constant economic, political and social crisis were going on.

Stressing the importance of the “museum cluster effect” in the post-Bilbao and (post)crisis era, the study examines the macro-level of cultural urbanism in the  cities of Serbia. It maps clusters, routes and networks of museums and other cultural institutions and spaces that support them, analyzing their role and potential in urban and regional development.

In the search for new urban models, cultural infrastructure today has the potential to become a transformative and connective tissue of the city and society, turning the culture and education into urban project. In the context of the knowledge-based society and intelligent network city, the new forms, use and impact of the cultural landscape in the mobilisation and diffusion of culture and cultural information becomes a key issue and a global challenge. Here they are observed also as a form of exhibiting and representing architecture, urbanism and landscape, and teaching about them. The emphasis on the symbolic, object and spatial didactics of museum clusters and routes, ranging from traditional centers of power to natural reserves, inscribes this study and the phenomenon that it deals with in the development priorities, providing at the same time theoretical and practical contributions to the discipline of urban curating and to the understanding of culture as one of the key dimensions of sustainability.

The role of space in the 21st century and in the society we would like to regard as “knowledge-based” is one of essential questions, to which different fields of knowledge are trying to answer. Museum clusters are a spatial phenomenon very present in contemporary cities, but not as much in the contemporary research. Yet, in these spaces within and between museums is the place “in between disciplines” where all the activities and ideas of spatial design, and the changes in the approach to reading, understanding and designing of space are manifested. This article points to the intertwining of different spatial disciplines in radical projects related to museum and other cultural clusters, through which they become a manifesto of spatial design, demonstrating the ultimate role of public space - education.

In a unique interview given by all three founding partners of Snøhetta due to the academic interest of the theme, Kjetil Trædal Thorsen, Tarald Lundevall and Craig Dykers, winners of the Mies van der Rohe Award 2009, talk about their work and inspiration, focussing on the architecture for culture and public spaces, their accessibility, openness, and capacity to change and care for all aspects of the society. Includes a short report on the Award and a review of the Norwegian National Opera and Ballet in Oslo.

The "Bilbao effect" has been one of the most used concepts and one of the most discussed phenomena in urban history of the last two decades. This paper questions what the proliferation of the replicas of the effect, imitated innumerable times in other cities wishing for a similar success, has meant for the disciplines of architecture and urbanism and for the system of cultural infrastructure.
We analyze those urban strategies that use museum buildings as triggers and catalysts for growth or physical, functional or symbolic regeneration, focusing on cases of newly created neighborhoods (Saadiyat Island, Abu Dhabi; West Kowloon, Hong Kong; Nuevo Polanco, Mexico City), and those that disseminate the cultural industry in art studios, galleries and museums to dynamize urban centers or re-qualify old industrial and port areas (Wynwood, Design District and Museum Park, Miami; West Bund, Shanghai) and examining the nuances, intentions and contexts, the general validity of the model and the causes of the diverse results. The sacred barriers between museums and business, if ever existed, have fallen, hence we pay special attention to the process of developing cultural mega-projects and their search for a satisfactory model even with many different actors involved.
We demonstrate that the content, the container and their surrounding do not lose importance in the cultural and tourist offer and in the educational project of the new global generation of cultural projects, but that the expectations move from an isolated building towards an ensemble, from architecture to urbanism, from one function to synergy, from the "Bilbao effect" to the cluster effect, from urban regeneration to global reposition.

Keywords: museum, urban art, urban culture, urban regeneration, new urban strategies

Removing the veils of prejudice and complexity, "On the Very Edge" reveals various "close other" faces of modernity in Serbia: barbarogenial, feminine, expressionist, sokolist... In a range from less familiar to already conventional themes, broader issues of the relations between the self and the other, tradition and modernity, metropolis and colony, center and margin, gender and power refract through the essays, challenging the deeply rooted idea of modernity as a Western European phenomenon and of the regional variants as its less valuable derivatives.

In our culture bread is a synonym for food, its shortage for hunger. Hence the great care that the traditional architecture dedicates to the facilities for grain storage. The granaries for wheat and corn are raised above the ground to preserve precious grains from moisture and rodents and to improve their ventilation. It has been their universal characteristic for thousands of years, in the geographical areas as diverse as the Nordic countries, Spain and Portugal, Turkey, China, Japan, Sub-Saharan Africa or Indonesia.

What is specific to the granaries of Serbia, in compact Pannonian villages, however, is a combination of functions. Not only the granaries and bins, wheat and corn, are horizontally connected, but as a rule they are raised above the ground level summer kitchens, and above them the pigeon houses are set. Conserving of food for winter enhances the symbolism of these farmers’ treasuries, which today bear witness to a preindustrial way of life, the human spirit, values ​​and ideas, and are of great importance not only in architectural, but also in anthropological and cultural terms. Sometimes transferable, sometimes utilitarianly reduced, and sometimes with a porch, richly decorated, they express the status of the farmer, but also his aspiration for beauty and respect for nature and bread.

That respect, symbolized by the solar disc, rolls through the iconography of the agrarian culture of Serbia from watermill point to decorations on kneading-troughs (furniture for storing flour and kneading bread) to the form of ritual bread. In the same way, the Pannonian fields, together with their rich fruit, are pouring in the pictures of Božur Ivanović into an explosion of colors and shapes of Banat barns and granaries. They are full to bursting, a cornucopia of life itself; they move and float over the great plain, merge with it and become one under heaven.

Ivanović’s ink drawings, yet, point out a different meaning of this deconstruction. The village collapses, and he as a diligent chronicler records this decline, highlighting it by mixing of media, paper tearing, shape distortion, bursting. The streets unwind endlessly, the strokes hurry and bend as heads of grain in a storm. In a symbolic meeting of the material and spiritual heritage, the author finds a way to remember its beauty, which calls for the protection, preservation and celebration of traditions, villages, bread, life.

In the life of each of us there is a painting that permanently defines his understanding of art and forms his worldview. For me, that is the painting "Bunjište (Midden)" by Božur Ivanović, with which I grew up exploring its forms, questioning its meanings and rejoicing in its colours. It is a part of one, today almost unknown, exuberant painting cycle of this author, whose creative opus is for the first time shown systematically to the public through these exhibitions.

Only a comprehensive chronological review allows us to discover the links, themes, media and poetics of Ivanović's works, which change as a reflection of different life stages, environments and interests. After graduation, he replaced his student fascination with fresco painting for the professional restoration and copying of frescoes over the monasteries of Serbia and Macedonia. This influence is reflected in his early works of strong colours and contrasts and large formats, such as "Redenik (Bandolier)", "Bunjište (Midden)" and "Rađanje života (The Birth of Life)", which express the enormous energy and optimism of the young author pondering over the world and life.

Dedicated in the maturity to the decentralization of culture, Ivanović introduces the motives of the Banat village into the abstract figuration of his paintings, defining his most famous creative phase "Ambari (Granaries)". In his paintings, the Pannonian fields and their rich crop overflow into the explosion of colours and shapes of the Banat granaries and barns. Full to bursting, they symbolize abundance and glorify life, floating through the endless plain with which they merge under the heavenly vault. Their spraying and deconstruction in Ivanović's drawings in ink acquire another meaning. By distorting the forms, breaking up the elements, splitting the paper and combining techniques, the artist emphasizes the deterioration of the village, hurrying to record its beauty with a quick and confidant gesture and to invite us to its preservation and revival. This encounter of nature and civilization, spiritual and material heritage, is retained in late Ivanović's works, in which he captures with easy strokes the Boka landscapes of his peace.

In Ivanović's scenography work, which includes performances "Kir Janja", "Partija šaha (Chess Game)" and others, there are the same, recognizable artistic expression and plastic and architectural elements. This retrospective allows for that significant segment of his creation to be re-documented, interpreted and evaluated, almost half a century after it was created and awarded for its translucency and elegance.

It is less known that Božur Ivanović, in addition to fine arts and scenography, has successfully dealt with graphic design and illustrated book covers. In the 1970’s and 1980’s, he created the visual identity of numerous companies in Serbia, including the famous "Utva" logo, "Ratar" flour packaging that we still remember, and a series of labels for “Vršački vinogradi”, some of which are still in use. This work is not covered by the retrospective – the research on Ivanović as a designer is still ahead of us.

Božur Ivanović belongs to perhaps the last generation of painters-bohemians, urban legends and people grand in every respect, who openly criticized the society and the system of that time, but remained in the country; who bypassed the establishment and business planning and management of their lavish talents and careers. Ivanović exhibited and was awarded at several collective exhibitions, but he was prevented from organizing solo exhibitions as a mature artist because of his political inadequacy. His works are only posthumously presented completely by the exhibition "Ambari" on the occasion of the 10th anniversary of his death at the Pavilion of the Republic of Serbia at the World Exhibition in Milan 2015 and by this retrospective in Pančevo, for which he was deeply life-related and creatively bound, in order to make them closer to the domestic and the international public, to perceive and study his opus and to recognize his contribution to Serbian art.

The significant transformation of postmodern cities and their urban life that push them into fearless competition, causing the need for urban regeneration and revitalization strategies, placed an increasing emphasis on culture policies. Within this context, the booming institution of museum marked strongly the end of the 20th century, developing more and more spatial concentrations, known as museum clusters. This process of systematization and ordering of museistic representation is not new and can be traced from the very beginning of museology, but in a relatively short period it experienced a tremendous expansion, becoming an important element of the tourism sector and urban economy.

This study aims to show the change of priorities in conception of museums, moving the from the museistic aspect, over the accent on the architecture, towards the highlighted urban dimension and a new urban model. It questions the change of exhibition cultures and policies of urban representation, as well as interaction between thus created public spaces and networks of museums and other circuits of culture, commerce and leisure in the city. On the more general level, the paper analyzes the change of the role of culture and leisure in our society, and how architecture and art position themselves in these conditions, moving from representation and exhibition in the 20th century museum to representation and exhibition in the 21st century city.

The primary focus is on the phenomenon of museum cluster and the way it shapes the built environment - the so-called ‘physical aspects of public culture’. The paper makes an overview of the characteristics that mark creation of these urban complexes throughout history, following the changes of cultural policies in urban planning strategies, as an introduction for an in depth analysis of urban morphology and architectural vocabulary used in contemporary museum clusters and their relationship of different urban circuits and networks. The coverage of the study is confined to major cities at the end of the twentieth century, mainly European, including also the remarkable cases from other continents in order to show the broadness of the phenomenon and to respond to the main topic of the conference, defining the place of museum clusters in the “Cross national transfer of planning ideas and local identity”

Replacing the missing agora, the museum cluster conquered all forms of urban morphology and topography, creating museum quarters, squares, streets and parks, hills, river banks, islands and dry beds. The architecture and urbanism of these spaces can be understood as ideological, sociological and public reflection of the institutions themselves, but also as a medium for promotion of the cultural relevance of the cities, providing an architectonic narrative for the art and urban curating. Advantages and disadvantages for the city and the museums have been analyzed, showing that success and failure depend on various factors and that, just like in any other urban model, there are no universal recipes. The global scale of the phenomena and its adaptability confirm the continuity and dynamism of this process, but also warn about the necessity of attention to cultural activities and experiments (the so-called software) in the redevelopment of public space and cultural infrastructure (the hardware).

In the housing complexes of the era of modernity in Belgrade, the historical Escarpitian 'erosion' is present in multiple senses, revealing new meanings and roles that they acquire in the contemporary city and its future. The strong contrast between the initial concepts, the transitional transformation and the current state of the large residential complexes is the most evident in New Belgrade, the model city of Yugoslav socialism. In the tension between the violent pressures of the neoliberal market and the already impossible docomomian protection, its conversion into a new center of business and commerce clearly shows the loss of the universal values of this urban landscape.
The abandonment of the premises of modern urbanism, based on the idea of scientific planning and social welfare, in the matrix of the market converts housing from value to price, demanding that we return to the broader questions of what the city is for, what is the community and what society we are creating. Between the densification and commercialization of consolidated urban areas and the informal development of undeveloped land, differences quickly diminish, lowering spatial standards, urban qualities and the variety of types and models. Planned as archipelagos in the sea of greenery, the mass housing complexes and neighborhoods of the era of modernity today form islands of urbanity in the continuous favela that can play a crucial role in the city's system and its resilience.