PIRAN COASTAL GALLERIES – 50 YEARS OF CONTEMPORARY ART

Piran Coastal Galleries – 50 Years of Contemporary Art |
Posters, catalogs, invitations, audio-video documents |

Curated by: Tina Jazbec, PhD |

Piran Civic Gallery, December 18, 2025 – May 10, 2026 |
Opening: Thursday, December 18, 2025 at 6 p. m.

In 2025, the Piran Coastal Galleries celebrate 50 years of activity. The fifty-year history of the leading visual-arts institution of the Slovene Littoral, holding the status of a regional museum of visual arts, is marked by an exhibition of documentary and archival material.

In addition to organizing exhibitions, the institution’s activities include numerous accompanying events: symposia, round tables, professional meetings, pedagogic and andragogical activities, as well as publishing work. A significant part of its program is also represented by long-standing traditional events, organized independently or in cooperation with various partners: Ex-Tempore Piran, Forma Viva Portorož, and the Piran Days of Architecture. Today, its diverse and rich exhibition activity takes place in venues in Piran, Portorož and Koper, while in the past the institution also managed exhibition spaces abroad. Furthermore, the Piran Coastal Galleries conduct extensive work within the public museum service, including research, study, documentation and archiving of visual-arts heritage.

The exhibition will include promotional, documentary, bibliographic and other archival materials: posters, exhibition catalogs, leaflets, invitations, other publications and printed matter. It will also offer an in-depth insight into the complex process of the making of exhibitions, as well as into their reception by both the general and professional public. The central focus of the exhibition will be the posters that accompanied numerous exhibitions of Slovenian and international artists from the earliest years of the institution to the present day. This extensive material speaks of decades of work in the field of contemporary visual art while reflecting the stylistic imprint of its time.

Within the framework of the exhibition, meetings and round tables will take place, along with guided tours and workshops dedicated to understanding the processes behind creating promotional material for exhibition events. In the workshops, participants will design invitations and posters, defining content and motifs while creating the visual identity of the selected material. They will learn about the meaning and characteristics of graphic design and visual-identity design. At the conclusion of the project, a special leaflet will be published. The adult workshops and guided tours will be led by Tina Jazbec and Matic Bukovac, while the pedagogic workshops will be conducted by Ana Papež and Rihard Lobenwein.

The project is carried out in cooperation with: RTV Slovenia – TV Koper-Capodistria and Vojko Tominc.

The realization of the project is made possible by: the Municipality of Piran, Municipality of Koper, and the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia.