This exhibition marks the beginning of collaboration of the Museum of Contemporary Art of the Republic of Srpska with the National Museum of Montenegro, with the aim of creating opportunities for exchanges and different kinds of professional cooperation, jointly developing projects and applying for their EU funding.

This is a specialised exhibition for the blind and visually impaired, consisting of prints, paintings and sculptures from the collection of the Museum of Contemporary Art of the Republic of Srpska and dedicated to the art group “Space-Shape”, founded in 1975, who introduced abstraction to art in Bosnia and Herzegovina back in the 1970’s.

The exhibition was first shown at the Museum of Contemporary Art of the Republic of Srpska to mark 40 years since the foundation of the art group “Space-Shape”. It was organised with the professional assistance and support of the Typhlological Museum in Zagreb, where it was staged June to August inclusive 2017. Its staging at Montenegro's “Miodrag Dado Đurić” Art Gallery represents the continuation of the fruitful collaboration between MSURS and partner museums from the region. It also indicates efforts aiming at inter-institutional and inter-sectoral networking and creating a web of museums, with the main aim of using specially organised programmes and the latest museological presentation techniques to help integrate blind and visually impaired persons in the cultural life of communities. After its staging in Cetinje, the exhibition will also be shown at the Gallery of Matica Srpska in Novi Sad.

It was possible to present museum items inclusively in this kind of exhibition thanks to the use of special adaptation techniques. The exhibits include downsized tactile replicas of artworks, as well as original pieces that can be touched by visitors; also, sounds and smells were used in the adaptation process. All the exhibits are displayed along with descriptive Braille labels and sound recordings containing background artist information and interpretations of the concepts behind the selected works. A special catalogue with texts in Braille was published to accompany the exhibition, designed to make it accessible to the visually impaired.

The project “Space, Touch, Shape” was curated by Dr. Sc. Sarita Vujković and Žana Vukičević, and staged with the assistance of the curatorial team of MSURS.