Upon proposal of the Management Board of the MSU, mayor Tomislav Tomašević has appointed Vesna Meštrić as the new Director of the MSU for a four-year term starting on 1 March 2024. The proposal of the Management Board, which was passed unanimously, states that Vesna Meštrić has formed collaborations through her years-long work at the Museum with numerous artists, curators and authors from different social and artistic fields, as well as with related institutions from Croatia and abroad, and actualised many domestic and international exhibition projects.    

The Museum’s Management Board have accentuated that Vesna Meštrić’s four-year work programme proposal for the MSU is competent, clearly elaborated conceptually and methodologically, and aimed at development. They pointed out that the programme ensures continuity of the initiated processes of the Museum’s transformation and repositioning through open and collaborative models of work, whereby it promotes socially relevant topics related to education, ecology, and community.

The proposed programme highly respectfully considers the recent course of the Museum opening up to local, regional and international stakeholders, with clear orientation and plan towards the continuation of the Museum’s internationalisation and its present re-actualisation. The programme anticipates further work on the process of the Museum’s restructuring, with the aim of better connecting all departments and drafting strategic plans of collection development. It also relies on the collaboration with a large number of domestic and international artists, as well as with local shareholders, which includes the consolidation of relations with museum institutions and the independent scene.

The most important elements include the drafting of the Museum’s new strategic plan for the period of 2024–2027, a clearly defined organisation of the exhibition programme with emphasis on collaboration and socially relevant topics such as ecology and focus on the community, the digitalisation and processing of the Museum holdings and fundus, the work on the pedagogical and andragogical programmes, orientation towards the local community through the development of long-term collaborations with different actors and groups, the continuation of positioning the Museum at the international level through programme partnerships with significant international museums, and the stabilisation of infrastructural issues related to the Museum’s building and equipment.

The Management Board believes that Vesna Meštrić possesses expert experience, communication and expert skills, and practical knowledge with which she will continue the struggle for the enhancement of the Museum’s operation at all levels, thereby successfully advocating for its local and international positioning and connecting with immediate and global surroundings in synergy of different actors.

Vesna Meštrić has worked at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MSU) as Curator since 2004, and in the capacity of Senior Curator and Head of the Vjenceslav Richter and Nada Kareš Richter Collection since 2013. Since 2016, she is Head of the Marie-Luise and Ruth Betlheim Collection – the works by students and professors of the Bauhaus. She achieved the status of Museum Advisor in 2021. In May 2023, she was appointed as Head of the Collections Department, and became Acting Director of the Museum of Contemporary Art in October of the same year.

During her work at the Museum, Vesna Meštrić has established a new expert concept of the Richter Collection, conceived and implemented the museological processing of the collection and the archive, as well as the accompanying exhibition and educational artistic programme. This approach has contributed to the visibility and relevance of the Richter Collection, not only at the local, but also at the international level, through collaboration with museum and educational institutions.

She has actualised numerous domestic and international exhibition projects, including the retrospective exhibition Vjenceslav Richter: Rebel With a Vision at the MSU and Neue Galerie Graz, for which she received the DPUH Annual Award for Best Exhibition in 2017, the exhibition Richter Experience – the Architect and His Art (Wevelgem, Belgija), Černigoj / Teater in dela iz Zbirke Marie-Luise Betlheim (Kostanjevica na Krki, Slovenija), and Bauhaus – the Networking of Ideas and Practice (MSU Zagreb). In the cycle of temporary exhibitions SintArt at the Richter Collection, she curated the exhibitions of David Maljković, Silvio Vujičić, Marko Tadić, Ksenija Turčić, Kristian Kožul, Toni Meštrović, Ištvan Išt Huzjan, Ivana Tkalčić. She authored the exhibition cycle From the Architect’s Archive and the interactive project for children The Adventures of Vito and Nada. She managed and coauthored the international research and exhibition project Bauhaus – the Networking of Ideas and Practice and the educational project Runaway Art. She coauthored several exhibitions, including Croatia First Minute (Avesta, Šweden), Bauhaus: From School to Movement (Museum of Modern Art, Split), From Imagination to Animation: Six Decades of Zagreb Film (MSU Zagreb), The World as a Pavilion. Vjenceslav Richter (BOZAR, Brussels, Belgium). She managed the processing and digitalisation projects of the archive holdings of Vjenceslav Richter, Ivan Picelj, and Zagreb Film. She regularly participates in international conferences and workshops; organised by MoMA New York and supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, she participated in the workshop “Getting Started: A Shared Responsibility.” She is a member of the Committee for International Cultural Collaboration at the Ministry of Culture and Media of the Republic of Croatia, the Awards Jury of the HMD, the Committee for the Selection of Representatives at the Venice Biennale for the Ministry of Culture and Media, and the Animafest Committee. She participated in drafting the Development Plan Proposal for Culture of the City of Zagreb as a member of the working group “Sustainable Urban Transformation and Development – Cultural Heritage, Art, Creative Industries and Cultural Infrastructure for the City of the Future.”