The Museum of Contemporary Art Zagreb is a living place of creation, display, interpretation, and preservation of contemporary art in all its forms. Its goal is to encourage and uphold the understanding of contemporary art through professional, innovative, and educative usage of exhibitions and collections, thus enabling different groups of visitors to learn, be creative, and get a unique experience. As a multi-program institution it mediates heritage and the contemporary scene, reaching from visual to performing and film art, thus making it an active and critical part of our community.

The Museum of Contemporary Art primarily attempts to be a public and autonomous venue where the categories of social engagement, responsibility, and equal opportunities for everybody are tested and examined on daily basis. Let us question that which has been already achieved through direct communication with artists and the public, through our respect for their experience, so that we have been able to change and gain strength.

The Museum of Contemporary Art Zagreb was founded in 1954 under the name City Gallery of Contemporary Art. The goal of this institution was to promote and collect recently produced artworks of younger generations which, among others, encompassed the achievements of the Exat 51 group – Ivan Picelj, Vjenceslav Richter, Aleksandar Srnec, Božidar Rašica, Vlado Kristl and others – artists who advocated geometric abstraction, developing forth the heritage of historical avant-garde. In the fifties the Museum organized the first travelling exhibitions of abstract art (Didactic Exhibition: Abstract Art) and had an important role in drawing the attention of culturally interested public to international modern and contemporary art. By the end of the fifties, the artist group GORGONA (Josip Vaništa, Ivan Kožarić, Julije Knifer, Marijan Jevšovar, Đuro Seder…), “the last European avant-garde group” as it was later labeled by international critics, initiated their activities under the auspices of the Museum.

The Museum moved into the new building in December 2009. The specific MSU Collections, formed during a period of half a century at the cultural border between the East and the West, rich exhibition and educative programs, archives, library, audio-visual centre, multimedia hall and many other facilities are now accessible to Croatian and international public.