Museum of Contemporary Art Skopje
Modernist museum on Kale hill built after the 1963 earthquake, with a large international art collection.
The museum was founded in 1964 in response to the earthquake that destroyed much of Skopje the previous year, when artists and institutions around the world sent works to help build a collection for the city. Poland donated the building, designed by the Warsaw architects Waclaw Klyszewski, Jerzy Mokrzynski and Eugeniusz Wierzbicki, and it opened on Kale hill in 1970. Low white pavilions and terraces look out over the old bazaar and the Vardar valley.
The collection now numbers several thousand works and is unusual for a museum of this size, combining Macedonian and Yugoslav art from the 1950s onwards with donated pieces by international figures such as Pablo Picasso, Fernand Leger, Alexander Calder, Victor Vasarely, Hans Hartung and Bridget Riley. Alongside the permanent holdings the museum runs a busy programme of temporary exhibitions, artist talks, publication launches and educational projects.
Highlights
- Building donated by Poland after the 1963 Skopje earthquake
- International works given by artists worldwide to rebuild the city's collection
- Terraces on Kale hill overlooking the old bazaar and the Vardar
- Changing exhibitions of Macedonian and international contemporary art
