LJUBLJANA.- More than 15 years after the time Moderna galerija was allotted the use of one of the buildings in the former Yugoslav People's Army barracks in Metelkova Street, the Museum of Contemporary Art Metelkova, the new unit of the Moderna galerija in Ljubljana, is finally opening. The MSUM will house the collection of contemporary art (the national and the international Arteast 2000+ collections) and stage a related exhibitions program. Located in MSUM there are also some of the expanded institution's professional services: the archives, the library and the restoration-conservation studio.

We are inaugurating the new museum with two exhibitions:

The Present and Presence. A selection of works from the Arteast 2000+ collection and the national collection of Moderna galerija; the show concept deals with various forms of time and is curated by Zdenka Badovinac, Bojana Piškur and Igor Španjol.

The Museum of Affects, in the Framework of L'Internationale*, bringing together four important European museums: Moderna galerija, Ljubljana, the Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA), Barcelona; the Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven; and the Museum van Hedendaagse Kunst, Antwerpen (M HKA).

It is curated by Bart de Baere and Bartomeu Marí, with Bojana Piškur, Leen De Backer, Teresa Grandas.

L'Internationale is a new long-term collaboration among museums and archives. The founding partners are the Moderna galerija in Ljubljana, the Július Koller Society in Bratislava, the Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA) in Barcelona, the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven, and the Museum van Hedendaagse Kunst in Antwerp (M HKA).

Besides the two exhibitions a number of special projects will be on view at the opening: Connections, a special set of rooms in which artist Apolonija Šušteršič has developed, together with MSUM, programs for the museum's interactive connections with its audience and various local and international agents, in particular the L'Internationale network. Also the artist's previous projects on the role of the museum of contemporary art in society are presented with documentary material.

The Depository bookstore, also conceived by Apolonija Šušteršič in collaboration with students of architecture and based on the idea of a storage room full of books that opens to the public.

e-flux video rental (EVR), a project by artists Anton Vidokle and Julieta Aranda, consisting of a video archive, a projection space, and a free video rental. Conceived in 2004, the project was first presented at 53 Ludlow Street in New York. In 2010 the artists donated the entire video archive to Moderna galerija in Ljubljana.

The opening of the museum is marked by two other important donations—a drawing on the entrance to the new museum by the internationally acclaimed Romanian artist Dan Perjovschi, In 1990 We Spoke About Freedom, Now We Speak About Money, 2011, analyzing the phenomenon of the artists' struggle for survival between smaller and smaller state subsidies and greater and greater private influence in art; and the two-institution logo MG+MSUM, a donation Moderna galerija received from its longstanding collaborators, the New Collectivism group.