Alexandra Kusá: Monumentálky – Prípadová štúdia SNG

The lecture will focus on long-term exhibitions and the „Monumentálky“ project, which has been running continuously at the Slovak National Gallery since 2022. It was related to the completion of the long-term reconstruction of the complex on the banks of the Danube. Its launch was conceived comprehensively, as a visitor space with multiple public functions. This was based on the institution’s definition at the time – not to perceive the gallery only as a place for exhibiting and storing collections, but also as a fully-fledged cultural space in a 21st-century European city – with everything that goes with it. This definition was directly followed up by the „Monumentálky“ project, in which works from the collections were placed in the complex in such a way that they functioned in direct relation to the architecture and not in relation to specific exhibition projects. It thus reflected the public, social, and representative function of the place. Thanks to its partners, this long-term project was able to go even further and, over time, acquire new contemporary artworks specifically for the premises. It thus tested the functionality and logic of the approach defined by Chapter V of the Building Act before 1989. A natural extension of the project were the protests in the form of artistic interventions from August 2024 to March 2025, when a large number of employees left the gallery, after which it was no longer possible to continue such actions, and the complex died out. Alexandra Kusá will present examples of good practice, but also failures and dead ends of the project, as well as ideas that were in the preparatory stage but could not be realized.

Alexandra Kusá is an art historian and curator. As an art historian, she focuses on issues of post-war art and architecture, as well as institutional criticism and practice. She specializes in the relationship between art and politics and the functioning of cultural institutions in the public interest. She lectured at the Faculty of Arts of Comenius University and worked for the National Gallery for a quarter of a century, which she also headed at one time. She oversaw a long-term and complicated investment project—the reconstruction, completion, and modernization of the Slovak National Gallery complex—and saw it through to a successful conclusion. Together with her colleagues, she also implemented this project as a „case study“ of the form and functioning of a 21st-century cultural institution in the domestic context. In addition, she prepared a number of exhibition and publishing projects, the largest of which was probably the publication dedicated to the art of Stalinist socialist realism, Prerušená pieseň (Interrupted Song, 2020).