PODGORICA.- In 2026, MCAM continues to strengthen its role as a key platform for contemporary artistic discourse locally and internationally, fostering meaningful exchange between local and global practices, supporting artistic research, and engaging diverse audiences. Through dynamic encounters between artists, curators, and the public, the museum remains committed to critical inquiry, experimentation, dialogue, and international collaboration.

This year’s program includes The Art Collection of Nonaligned Countries Laboratory, solo exhibitions by Max Neumann, Katarina Tomašević Crawford, Cindy Sherman, Irena Lagator Pejović, Miroslaw Bałka, Roman Đuranović and Ivan Stojaković, as well as IRWIN, and Jusuf Hadžifejzović with Eun Su Lim. The program also features the collective exhibitions Oneiric Landscapes and Montenegro Today, along with the project Venice Biennale.

Max Neumann: Gegenfrage
Venue: Gallery MCAM
Curator: Natalija Đuranović
February 3–March 17, 2026

The solo exhibition Gegenfrage by Max Neumann marks his first solo presentation in Montenegro, at the MCAM Gallery. The exhibition features works created from 1993 to the present and is conceived as a retrospective of the artist’s oeuvre. The focus is on the human figure, which in Neumann’s work becomes a universal symbol of the existential experience of contemporary man. Depersonalized figures reflect anonymity, structures of power, and the social conditions of the urban environment. Neumann’s expression conveys the impression of a swift and intuitive process, based on strong draughtsmanship, establishing a dialogue between personal experience and collective visual memory. A reduced color palette, thoughtful composition, and absence of narrative make his painting powerful and contemporary. The artist believes in the autonomy of the painting, whose meaning derives from its form and visual perception. His works invite the viewer to personal interpretation and internal dialogue. The exhibition is structured in three sections: drawing, painting, and collage, which together form a complex and contemplative presentation.

Cindy Sherman
Curators: Gunnar B. Kvaran, Milica Bezmarević and Blanka Marković
Venue: Petrović’s Palace
April 9–June 30, 2026

For the first time in Montenegro and this part of the region, the MCAM presents an exhibition of works by Cindy Sherman, one of the most influential contemporary artists. The show focuses on three series — Untitled Film Stills, Centerfolds, and Faces tracing Sherman’s ongoing investigation into identity, representation, and the cultural construction of the self.

In Untitled Film Stills, Sherman performs female roles shaped by Hollywood cinema and popular media, using theatricality and expressive gestures to reveal how societal expectations define identity. Centerfolds shifts inward, presenting vulnerable, introspective young women whose posture, gaze, and context convey subtle psychological states, exploring the tension between private experience and public representation.

Her Faces series employes digital manipulation and collage to fragment and transform faces and bodies into surreal, grotesque, or comical masks, demonstrating the fluid, performative nature of identity.

Together, these series offer a critical reflection on the complex interplay of appearance, perception, and identity, marking a unique opportunity to encounter Sherman’s work in the region for the first time.

Montenegro Today: Overview of the Montenegrin Contemporary Art Scene
Venue: MCAM (all galleries) + Art Pavillion AFAM
July–September 2026

The MCAM presents Overview of the Montenegrin Contemporary Art Scene, a comprehensive research-based project dedicated to examining current developments in Montenegro’s visual arts. Grounded in field research and analytical study of key artistic phenomena, the project brings together a curated selection of works that reflect the diversity and vitality of contemporary artistic production in the country.

Accompanied by a publication, the exhibition offers new insights and an updated critical perspective on the positions, concerns, and directions shaping Montenegrin contemporary art today. By mapping artistic practices across generations and approaches, the project aims to provide both local and international audiences with a deeper understanding of the evolving cultural landscape.

Miroslaw Balka: 1978/2026/Otwock+
Curator: Teodora Nikčević
Venue: Petrović Palace and The House of The King’s Guard
October 9–December 15, 2026

Conceived as a retrospective viewpoint on Mirosław Bałka’s artistic practice, 1978/2026/Otwock+ brings together over four decades of work shaped by a sustained investigation of the body, memory, material, and space. The exhibition takes Otwock, where the artist grew up and continues to work, as its point of departure, understood not only as a geographic location but as a mental and productive site from which Bałka’s practice has continuously expanded.

Organized as a constellation rather than a linear survey, the exhibition connects works from different periods of Bałka’s career alongside in situ installations and a curated selection of video works. Humble, often poetic materials function as carriers of memory and trace, transforming the exhibition space into a field of quiet tension and reflection that invites attentiveness, slowness, and embodied experience. Moving between figuration and abstraction, presence and absence, the personal and the collective, Bałka’s works resist narrative resolution, instead constructing spatial and perceptual situations that engage the viewer in a direct and immersive encounter with his practice.

IRWIN / State as a School
Curator: Natalija Vujošević
Venue: MCAM Gallery
October–November 2026

State as a School brings the Slovenian collective IRWIN (Dušan Mandič, Miran Mohar, Andrej Savski, Roman Uranjek, Borut Vogelnik) into dialogue with long-term collaborators Eda Čufer, Zdenka Badovinac, Inke Arns, Tomaž Mastnak, Mihnea Mircan and others. Conceived as a discursive space, the exhibition moves backward toward the collective’s formation and key ideas—the dissolution of Yugoslavia and post Cold War cartography—while interrogating after-1989 narratives of knowledge, memory, and transition. Alongside a series of talks and lectures, the exhibition presents ready-made photographic series, documented performances, and video works, with elements extending into public space. Selected works occupy multiple positions: as part of the oeuvre, as an active archive, and as a methodological framework. As the project unfolds through backward movement, it articulates a new perspective on the present, positioning the exhibition space as a site of negotiation and inquiry—where shifted viewpoints and complex geopolitical choreographies converge around an enduring question: time for a new state? This project is realized in cooperation with MGML Ljubljana.