Exhibiting in Slovenia 1947–1979 is a website developed by a group of researchers investigating the exhibiting of visual art and, to a lesser extent, architecture and other exhibiting activities during that period. The period is framed by two exhibitions which, through their organisation, content orientation, the selection of works, and the responses they elicited, reflect the historical situation of their time. The guest show Exhibition of Soviet Painters (Museum of Modern Art in Ljubljana, 1947) is representative of the brief period of the Yugoslav rapprochement to the Soviet Union in the field of art. This phase was not very prominent in Slovenia and ended in 1948, following Yugoslavia's expulsion from the Cominform. The second exhibition, the large retrospective Slovenian Fine Arts 1945–1978 (Museum of Modern Art in Ljubljana and Architectural Museum Ljubljana, 1979), presented a broad spectrum of architecture, design and art, yet through its specific mode of presentation and interpretation, it also confirmed modernism as the most important current of Slovenian artistic production during the aforementioned period.
The research group organised two scientific symposia, focusing on the broader context of art exhibitions and analysing the situation in the Slovenian territory, first within the Austrian and then the Yugoslav context. In their published scientific articles and currently unpublished working materials, the researchers explore specialised topics and the prehistory of post-war exhibiting. Additionally, parallel research into the exhibition activities in Ljubljana between 1918 and 1945 was conducted, using the Jakopič Pavilion as a case study — again at the Department of Art History at the Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana, but by a different research group.
The Art Exhibition Venues in Slovenia 1947–1979: Interactive Map is the main feature of this website, providing an overview of the development and operation of Slovenia's art exhibiting infrastructure. This online tool provides the basic information about who, when and why introduced more permanent forms of exhibiting or established actual exhibition venues. Compared to the very modest pre-war situation and the fact that the first purpose-built exhibition space for art in Ljubljana was opened only in 1909, the period under consideration reveals remarkable progress in art exhibiting. By the end of the 1970s, Slovenia had developed a highly diverse, polycentric and increasingly professionalised network of exhibition venues, featuring numerous specialised institutions and well-developed inter-institutional links both nationally and internationally.
The interactive map's factual approach is further expanded in the book Desires and Contradictions: Exhibiting Art and Architecture in Slovenia 1947–1979, which focuses on specific aspects of exhibiting, especially in relation to the Yugoslav state system, its doctrines and geopolitical perspectives at the time. Through various case studies, the book explores what, in relation to art and architecture exhibiting, fundamentally defined art and culture at that time, and how these fields operated in relation to the state: whether in alignment with state ideology and reinforcing it, or not. The book also examines what the exhibitions represented and how this representation was articulated, both in light of the specific national ambitions of the Yugoslav nations and the construction or deconstruction of a common Yugoslav cultural identity, as well as its outward projection — the creation of a unified image of the socialist state on the international stage.