The Bulgarian Art and Culture Foundation is pleased to announce the completion of the study on the proposal for the donation of a collection of Bulgarian contemporary art to the Georges Pompidou Center, Paris.
Since 2018, art historian Desislava Dimova, with the help of her Bulgarian colleagues, has been working with curators from the Center to familiarize them with the history and trends in Bulgarian contemporary art and to identify authors and works that would be of interest in the specific context of the Pompidou collection.
During two working visits to Bulgaria, together with two directors of the French institution – Bernard Blistin in 2018 and Xavier Re in 2023 – curators from Pompidou visited studios and met personally with over 20 Bulgarian artists, viewed museum and private collections, got acquainted with the work of dozens of Bulgarian authors from the second half of the 20th century to the present day, as well as with representatives of the contemporary Bulgarian scene – art critics, curators, gallerists, collectors and patrons.
The donation proposal, finalized in dialogue with Pompidou, and with the desire to present contemporary Bulgarian art as widely as possible, was sent to the project manager from the French side – curator Nicolas Liuchi-Gutnikov. The proposal is supported by detailed portfolios and includes over 40 works by 30 contemporary Bulgarian authors, 12 of whom are women. It is pending detailed consideration by the Pompidou Center team, as well as its presentation to two committees for the final selection.
We thank all the artists, art critics, gallerists, collectors and patrons who have supported and continue to support the cause of Bulgarian contemporary art finding a place in the permanent collections of world museums.
We thank the Sofia Municipality for its assistance at the most crucial moment of the project, so that we could complete this ambitious but delicate work, with the necessary attention to Bulgarian artists.
The project is implemented with the financial support of the Sofia Municipality and is part of the Cultural Calendar of Sofia.
