UNESCO, the EU-Delegation, several Embassies as well as representatives of the city, the municipalities and the Canton of Sarajevo are sharing this photo where they are happily posing on the construction site of the future Ars Aevi museum of contemporary art, at the occasion of the beginning of the construction works.
And nobody notices what is wrong with this picture?
Don’t get me wrong: Ars Aevi is a fantastic initiative which has been waiting way too long to get its home and totally deserves an adequate building.
And I am particularly happy for Enjo Hadžiomerspahić who launched this idea in 1992 and has been fighting for its implementation ever since.
Nevertheless, the conditions in which the future Ars Aevi-Museum is now supposed to be constructed raises at least two questions, and they are both related to the same point: its impact on the History Museum of BiH, this stunning piece of modernist architecture from the 1960s situated just next to the construction site.
As everybody knows, the History Museum of BiH is not supported by any structural funding since more than 30 years and the building is in a very bad shape, as you can already recognize with the crumbling facade on the photos which everybody happily shared.
So here are the two questions, and I hope that the persons in charge of and financing Ars Aevi will provide convincing answers.
1. How is it possible to build a brand new museum in immediate vicinity to another one which is falling apart, without including in the planning the full-scale renovation of the already existing building?
It is true that more than two years ago, the city and the canton have announced to allocate 1,8 Million KM for the restoration of the History Museum of BiH. This is better than nothing, but it has not been implemented yet, and, more importantly, for an adequate and comprehensive restoration work of the entire museum much much more would be needed, and I have not heard about a thought-out overall restoration plan with sufficient financial means and which would somehow be linked with the construction of Ars Aevi.
2. How is it possible to start construction work for Ars Aevi without assuring that this will not further damage the building of the History Museum of BiH?
The future Ars Aevi building is planned to be built in a distance, not of 50 meter or even 10 meter from the History Museum of BiH, but in a distance of exactly 0 meter. It is supposed to run directly along the 100-metre-long longitudinal wall, flanking and touching the plateau under the cubus, the inner atrium and the office block of the History Museum.
One might already wonder if it is the most adequate architectural solution to interfere so strongly in the spatial arrangement of this National monument.
But much more is at stake here:
The construction site, in a vicinity of, once again, exactly 0 meter from the History Museum of BiH, will be massive, digging deeply into the earth, and for sure such an intervention will have an impact on the building of the History Museum of BiH and its statics. It is highly probable that it will damage even more the anyway fragile and damaged outside walls of the Museum and probably make the facade of the cubus crumble even more. And who guarantees that is it not even putting in danger the stability of the entire building, first of all the famous cubus as its centerpiece?
The building of the History Museum of BiH, constructed in the 1960s on plans by Boris Magaš, Radovan Horvat, and Edo Šmidihen, is celebrated worldwide as a masterpiece of Yugoslav modernist architecture.
I have been working with the History Museum of BiH since many years and the museum team has been doing amazing work, in very difficult circumstances, to fill the Museum with life and to make it a respected and innovative cultural space.
The History Museum of BiH, its team and its visitors deserve a beautiful and complementary neighbor. Not one who doesn’t care and who might even put them in danger.
I say yes to an adequate and beautiful building for Ars Aevi. But not at the expense of the History Musuem of Bosnia and Herzegovina and its magnificent building.
(Originally published on my facebook-page on July 15, 2026)