Galerija Miroslav Kraljevic (G-MK), was founded in 1986 as part of the Visual Arts Section of the INA Association for Art and Culture. Initially based on the socialist idea of the worker who would not only be a consumer of culture, but also an active participant in its production, the Gallery exhibited artworks made by amateur artists (employees of INA and members of its association), while the rest of its program focused on presenting the production of prominent Yugoslav artists. In time, the Gallery, programmed since the late 1980′s by art historian and curator Branko Francesch, turned towards contemporary artistic practices, including new media, intermediality and experimentation, to present emerging regional and international artists.

In 2005 the arrival of Antonia Majaca as Director resulted in numerous changes. On a structural level, a new board was established. Majaca opened up the Gallery’s network of individual and institutional collaborators, initiating more active involvement from curators, artists, writers and intellectuals with its program. The idea of what a contemporary art venue could or should be was substantially reconfigured, resulting in a transformation in which the Gallery was no longer purely a site of presentation, but also one of artistic production, critical reflection, debate, education and intellectual exchange. This “openness” and the dismantlement of pre-fixed and hierarchical institutional roles created new audiences and a new “public”, that encouraged a completely different model of participation in “social life”.

G-MK initiates and supports open, exploratory, live and process-bound projects and activities in which once fixed roles are continuously destabilized, where the institution is seen and “felt” more as an “exploration unit”than as an institution with a predetermined set of aims defined by its physicality and its staff. Rather then developing as a fixed place of representation, G-MK embraces the idea of sharing what is common, becoming a point of ‘streaming’ rather than representing.

In addition to its exhibition program focused on contemporary art practices, G-MK hosts a number of residency and research programs and pays close attention to collaborating with artists on the development of new projects.

Since 2009, the space of G-MK became one of the outposts for the discursive, publishing and research activities of the Institute for Duration, Location and Variables (DeLVe) run by the G-MK curatorial team. DeLVe is envisioned as a nomadic platform for a series of research projects, taking up the space between ‘academia’ and the sphere of production of contemporary art, thus allowing for innovative, interdisciplinary and ‘emancipated’ modes of research and knowledge production, with the vision of being unbound by rules, deadlines and the pressures of ‘performance’.

G-MK presents approximately ten to fifteen exhibitions each year.

Most outstanding projects in recent years:

Andreja Kuluncic, “On the State of the Nation’; Igor Grubic, 366 liberation rituals; Omer Fast, “The Great Message” 
“Monument to Transformation”, Curated by Vit Havranek and Zbynek Baladran; “Micropolitics”, talks series (in collaboration with BLOK, Local Base for Culture Refreshment) including; Differentiated Neighborhoods of New Belgrade, Angel Nevarez and Valerie Tevere, Carlos Motta, Matei Bejenaru, Judi Werthein, Apolonija Sustersic, Mika Hannula and Nina Mšntmann.

G-MK leads a series of new programs including lectures and discussions with artists, curators and theorists. This new institutional approach was characterized by a self-reflexive and “self-activating” impulse: the questioning of its own roles, potentials, “duties”, interests and passions and how they form relations within the complex system of cultural and social institutions and the modes of production they instigate or suppress.

Distinct programme strands include; public lectures, seminars, workshops and tours.

G-MK offers numerous educational projects such as workshops with students, and parallel “schools” of contemporary art and art history, through which the young audience can approach contemporary art.

G-MK regularly collaborates with the Academy of Fine Arts, Zagreb and London Metropolitan University, London on student exchanges.

G-MK regularly publishes exhibition catalogues and brochures that are dependent on the galleries activities and therefore the number produced varies from year to year.

G-MK’s surface area/capacity is 60 m2.