Jakopič Gallery

The Jakopič Gallery became one of the central galleries of the Museum and Galleries of Ljubljana public institute in 2008. Over the years, we have presented a diversity of projects from fields of fine art, design, photography, architecture, etc.

However, the vision of the gallery has evolved over the last decade, based on our desire to contribute to a wider social understanding of photography as one of the most expressive artistic, communicative and creative visual media. This has resulted in focusing the gallery’s exhibition and education programmes on photography exclusively.

© Blaž Gutman / MGML

© Andrej Peunik / MGML

The Jakopič Gallery has since turned into a major venue to stage extensive exhibitions of works by photographers of global renown (Letizia Battaglia, Roger Ballen, Lee Miller, Josef Koudelka, Susan Meiselas, Marc Riboud and other Magnum photographers, Sebastião Salgado, Lucien Hervé), and comprehensive exhibitions of works by prominent Slovenian photographers (Marko Modic, Damjan Gale, Tihomir Pinter, DK, Bojan Radovič etc.) featuring exhaustive, often life spanning oeuvres that had not previously received integral expert treatment.

In the accompanying and education programme, we have organised several lectures, talks and workshops with renowned photographers from Slovenia and abroad (in 2023 with Susan Meiselas and in 2022 with Simon Norfolk and Bojan Radovič). Since 2017 we have been running a year-round programme of workshops Up Close: Photography as a Way of Seeing. For the youngest visitors, we offer an insight into the world of photography with adopted workshops, and we regularly produce a special guide for independent family visits to the gallery. We have also established a community of regular visitors to our gallery, named Friends of the Jakopič Gallery.

The Jakopič Gallery is also characterised by its location under the Slovenska cesta, which contributes to the specificity of the exhibition space; it is somewhat dark, but that is why it is mystical, with hidden corners that invite the visitor to explore. 

Interestingly, the gallery is located on the site of a Roman basilica, the central building of Roman Emona, which stood 2000 years ago, and above it, on the site of the former Forum, the residential neighbourhood of Ferant's Garden was built in the 20th century, according to a plan by the architect Edvard Ravnikar - whose 30th anniversary of death is also commemorated in 2023.

It is a gallery space with an unbroken continuity of exhibition activities since the first opening of the Rihard Jakopič Fine Art Gallery in 1979. At the time of Slovenia's independence, the exhibition space came under the auspices of the Museum of Architecture Ljubljana under the new name of Jakopič Gallery, which operated until 2008, when it underwent a renewed change in management (MGML), name (in slovene Galerija Jakopič), programme and exhibition vision.

© Blaž Gutman / MGML

© Matevž Paternoster / MGML

When you visit us, please note the Tomaž Brate Mediatheque, a joint project pursued by the Jakopič Gallery and MoTA - Museum of Transitory Art,  a multidisciplinary platform dedicated to advancing the research, production and presentation of transitory, experimental, and live art forms.

The Mediatheque operates as a reading room, providing publications dealing with contemporary art, design, architecture, photography... It includes the entire private book collection of the deceased architect Tomaž Brate, whose memory also provides its name.

For more than 15 years now, heritage and present-day creativity in dialogue give rise to new inspiration at the Jakopič Gallery, and on that we have been building high-quality and cutting-edge exhibition programmes for our visitors, sometimes with an element of the unexpected.