Current exhibitions

As of November this year, artist Marcel Mališ will be painting his authorial replica of the lost work in the SNG atrium under a changed title ThanksSeeming of the Czechoslovak People. How precisely he will copy the origin is up to his decision. The gallery will be his "studio" and the picture will develop in front of the public eye. The painting action will become a starting point of a new experimental genre - an art undertaking which reflects our thinking about the status of the national gallery as an educational institution of today; a place of asking questions and looking for answers.

Project Seven Liberal Thoughts on the Arts, a collective work by curators at the SNG, responds to the flourishing of online culture during the quarantine measures because of the Covid-19 pandemic. Even prior to that, the SNG's digital footprint was relatively pronounced, and therefore under the new conditions it came naturally to us to expand our online range.

Live art, in exceptionally diverse media, is in this period harder to lay hold of in museums than ever before. All the more therefore do we appreciate the generous financial gift from Tatra banka, now making it possible to take in live art for the second year running – to “catch the butterfly”. The exhibition presents the newest additions to SNG collections by artists of the middle generation of Slovakia's contemporary art. Erik Binder, Marko Blažo, Marek Kvetan, Denisa Lehocká and Milan Tittel together offer us a varied yet coherent assortment of contemporary art approaches, media, and themes.

At a time when SNG was still chasing novelties and even risked acquiring a diploma project of a promising graduate, a performance Man on the River (2011) by Tomáš Šoltýs (1985) was created. The image of the man, the artist himself, who, as Christ walked, "flowed" on the waves of the Danube, had a nature of an endurance exercise - it was a demanding, life-investing performance. It got noticed not only by the cultural audiences but also by the city's security forces.

Do you have a knack for art? is an international platform focusing on art education. Every year it organizes a contest for high school students who want to deepen their interest in art and express their opinions on contemporary art and society. The exhibition presents the best projects of this year's competition with the theme Freedom of Choice by teams from all around Slovakia.