This series of interviews documents the lives of artists and art professionals who worked in Kosovo and were part of the art scene in the 1970s, and steadily gained recognition in the Yugoslav art space over two decades. The political context that gave rise to the visual arts came to represent Kosovo’s golden age in Yugoslavia. This period of great prosperity seemed to be at the core of institutional memory, including that of cultural institutions. It is no wonder that the Gallery of Arts in Pristina, today the National Gallery of Kosovo, was established in 1979, becoming the first arts institution to define how works of art would be displayed and communicated to the public.
The oral history video-recordings provide valuable first-hand testimonies of events of the past. The views and opinions expressed in oral history interviews are those of the interviewees, who describe events from their own perspectives. The interviews are historical documents and their language, tone and content reflect attitudes of times past in dialogue with the interviewee’s current worldviews.
The National Gallery Oral History Project was initiated in late 2016 by Oral History Initiative in collaboration with the National Gallery of Kosovo.