The lost museum

Poduene Railway Station, the Sofia Arsenal, and then… a Museum of Contemporary Art in Sofia

Four years after Ivan Mudov’s Poduene endeavour, a new media campaign, this time in earnest, announced that on the initiative of the National Art Gallery (a National Museum of Bulgarian Pictorial Arts), the creation of a museum of contemporary art is to be started in Sofia. The public was informed of the location of the building and was shown several successfully plotted pictures of the three-dimensional model which illustrates the architectural concept for adapting the Sofia Arsenal for peace purposes. Unfortunately, there are too many questions stemming from the complete lack of transparency of the process that precedes the construction works. Architects and artists, curators and gallerists are unable to fathom why a competition for the development of the building concept was not organized. Has anybody conducted research on the functional, cultural, and economic conditions which guarantee the successful place of the Sofia-based museum of contemporary art among its European counterparts? The architectural association Transformatori sent an open letter of protest to the concerned institutions and it was widely supported. It also caused discussions at the Union of Architects in Bulgaria. Let us hope that it is the first one in a meaningful succession of talks.
Abitare Bulgaria gathered different opinions, and tried to avoid interpreting the obviously untenable project. We ask the questions whose answers are going to bring us closer to an actually functioning Museum of Contemporary Art in Sofia.