Museum of Contemporary Art in Belgrade: communication strategies with the public 1965-2021

Abstract

Art in Serbia is increasingly encountering misunderstanding and lack of interest, especially among the younger generations, which mostly come from ignorance. The ignorance is contributed by the lack of communication strategies, which serve to inform and educate. This problem in terms of art in Serbia is perhaps most related to contemporary art. For this reason, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Belgrade was chosen for this thesis. The thesis is divided in three chapters, which describe communication strategies adopted in three different periods: in the past, with an overview of the history of the museum since its opening in 1965, during its closures in 1999, between 2007 and 2017 and in 2019 and in the COVID-19 period. Communication strategies are presented through Museum’s programs, exhibitions, collections and its work in general. The hypothesis that goes through this thesis is that the insufficient knowledge of students about the Museum of Contemporary Art can be improved by modernizing communication strategies, applying modern technologies in the direction of personalized communications and improving general education within the school system. The aim of the thesis is to present the communication strategies adopted between 1965 and 2021 to fill the gaps in the knowledge of the target group of my thesis: – students aged between 18 and 30. In order to find those gaps the method of questionnaire was chosen. After publishing the questionnaire in the student’s group on Facebook (“Studenti Beogradskog Univerziteta”), the results showed the students initial knowledge of the museum. This was the starting point for supplementation of that knowledge and ignorance through communicational strategies. Because of the situation with COVID 19, questionnaires were filled on-line. Sources used for the thesis include books, articles and papers, online questionnaires and online interviews.