Public guided tours: admission fee, NO surcharge 
Bookings are mandatory due to limited availability. 
Public guided tours in Slovenian, guided tours in English by prior arrangement

To apply (providing your name and surname), please contact stiki@cd-cc.si

Children under 4 enjoy free admission. 
Adult admission EUR 6/person
Discounted tickets EUR 4/person (for visitors aged under 25 and 65+)
Family tickets EUR 13 (max two adults and unlimited number of children)

The exhibition highlights the important laws of nature and the fact that everything in our world is changing. Earth has been changing since the planet formed, and over a history spanning billions of years life on Earth has undergone evolutionary change. On every level, we are witnessing changes occurring between birth and death, the seasons, day and night, between ebb and flow. Living environments are also changing. Massive and alarming changes in nature have recently been caused by mankind. Human over-exploitation of natural resources and pollution have led to global climate change, species are becoming extinct at a significantly faster rate than ever before in the history of life on Earth.

The exhibition In the Vortex of Change takes us through the evolution of Earth and life on our planet, providing an up-close look at the major types of natural environments (mountains, the sea, rivers, forests, the subterranean world, meadows), as well as surprising and unusual changes, changes often hidden from view but occurring constantly in nature. The show offers an opportunity to discover, explore and marvel at the mysteries of nature, as well as to reflect on and find answers to various questions. Perhaps the most difficult of these questions is whether mankind will have the wisdom of foresight to stop the destruction of nature and ensure sustainable development for posterity. And how each one of us can play our part in saving the Earth.

Please note that all exhibitions will be closed for maintenance between Saturday 8 and Monday 10 April. We invite you to visit our shows again from 11 April.
 

The exhibition highlights the important principles of nature and the fact that everything in our world is changing. Earth has been changing since the planet formed, and over a history spanning billions of years life on Earth has undergone evolutionary change. On every level, we are witnessing changes occurring between birth and death, the seasons, day and night, between ebb and flow. Living environments are also changing. Massive and alarming changes in nature have recently been caused by mankind. Human over-exploitation of natural resources and pollution have led to global climate change, species are becoming extinct at a significantly faster rate than ever before in the history of life on Earth.

The exhibition In the Vortex of Change takes us through the evolution of Earth and life on our planet, providing an up-close look at the major types of natural environments (mountains, the sea, rivers, forests, the subterranean world, meadows), as well as surprising and unusual changes, changes often hidden from view but occurring constantly in nature. The show offers an opportunity to discover, explore and marvel at the mysteries of nature, as well as to reflect on and find answers to various questions. Perhaps the most difficult of these questions is whether mankind will have the wisdom of foresight to stop the destruction of nature and ensure sustainable development for posterity. And how each one of us can play our part in saving the Earth.
 

Admission

Regular ticket prices
Adult ticket: EUR 6 and 4* (*for visitors aged under 25 and 65+)
Children under 4: free admission
Family ticket: EUR 13 (max two adults and children aged under 15)
Children's workshops: admission + surcharge EUR 3 

Public guided tour: admission fee, no surcharge for guided tour
Tour with commentary: admission fee + EUR 2 (guided tour surcharge)

School visits (10 or more persons): 
Admission: EUR 3/person
Guided tour: admission + EUR 20 (surcharge for the tour)
Guided tour with workshop: 6 EUR/person

Adult groups (10 or more persons):
Guided tour: admission + EUR 25 (surcharge for the tour)

Monograph: EUR 20 

Tickets for the In the Vortex of Change exhibition are available at a 20% discount when presenting a ticket for the Slovenian Museum of Natural History.  

Group bookings: kristina.jermancic@cd-c.si


The CD Gallery is open daily from 10.00 to 20.00, Thursdays until 21.00.
Public guided tours: Thursdays at 18.00 (in Slovenian; in English available by prior arrangement)
Tickets are available at the entrance to the CD Gallery (entrance from Prešernova Street, the Council of Europe Park)

Z vstopnico za delavnico iz cikla SPREMINJANJA (Prirodoslovni muzej Slovenije) znižana cena za vstop na razstavo V vrtincu sprememb (Cankarjev dom)

Ob razstavi V vrtincu sprememb Prirodoslovni muzej Slovenije pripravlja cikel sobotnih delavnic za otroke SPREMINJANJA. Z vstopnico za delavnico iz cikla SPREMINJANJA tisti dan vstop na razstavo V vrtincu sprememb v Galeriji Cankarjevega doma po znižani ceni 3 EUR.   

Short (60-minute) exhibition tours with a workshop are offered to groups of children in kindergartens and the first and second triads of primary school, and guided tours (60-minute) with worksheets are organised for groups of children in the third triad of primary school and secondary school students.
 

For kindergartens and schoolchildren in the first triad of primary school
Drawing Postcards
The children first see the exhibition, stopping at various exhibits and this year's award-winning works. The guide asks questions about illustration (what it is, where it is found, which ones they like...). After the introductory part, the children listen to a fairy tale by Manica K. Musil: Lev Izidor. The reading is followed by a workshop; Children get blank postcards and draw their own illustrations. They send postcards to their grandmothers and grandfathers, or friends.
Admission: EUR 5 
Free of charge for teachers
 

For schoolchildren in the second triad of primary school
A Stroll Among Illustrations
Guided tour of the exhibition with worksheets and a workshop
Children see the exhibition with a guide. They discover the history of the Biennial, devote special attention to illustration (genres, history, etc.) and learn about the award winners. In the end, they complete their worksheets and draw "their own illustrations" on blank postcards. The children send the postcards to their grandmothers and grandfathers, or friends.
Admission: EUR 3 
Surcharge for a guided tour: EUR 20 /group
Free of charge for teachers

For schoolchildren in the third triad of primary school and high school students
It's All Illustration
Guided tour of the exhibition with worksheets
The tour guide gives an outline of the Biennial and its history, as well as the award winners, devotes attention to the history of Slovenian illustration and its role in today’s society. The guide presents different genres of illustration, and talks about the work of contemporary illustrators, the techniques and methods they utilize, etc.
Admission: EUR 3 
Surcharge for a guided tour: EUR 20 /group
Free of charge for teachers

Guided tours by prior arrangement only. For bookings please contact:  kristina.jermancic@cd-cc.si

Author of the exhibition : dr. Asta Vrečko


The Outside the Frame exhibition is dedicated to the Independent Group of Slovenian Artists comprising fourteen major Slovenian artists: Zoran Didek, Boris Kalin, Zdenko Kalin, Stane Kregar, France Mihelič, Zoran Mušič, Nikolaj Omersa, France Pavlovec, Nikolaj Pirnat, Marij Pregelj, Karel Putrih, Maksim Sedej, Frančišek Smerdu and Evgen Sajovic. The Independent artists left a deep imprint on interwar art, and then played a prominent role in post-war art and culture, becoming the first professors at the Ljubljana Academy of Fine Arts. 
The works, some of which are presented to the public for the first time, come from both public and private art collections; Cankarjev dom’s exhibition is the first in-depth public showcase of the collective.

The Independents studied at the academies in Zagreb or Prague. They set out on their professional careers in a time fraught with economic crisis and a strained political situation in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. These young artists formed a group that allowed them to jointly organise exhibitions, fight for artists’ rights, advocate the establishment of the Museum of Modern Art and the Academy of Fine Arts, as well as acquisition of artworks, publish articles in newspapers and magazines, organise art dances and plan study trips. As a collective, they worked most actively between 1937 and 1941, when the war broke out in Yugoslavia. Both the group’s activities and individual artworks stand out prominently from concurrent artistic output. Artistically, the Independents were drawn to the movements of moderate modernism and followed the general shift towards realism within Yugoslav and European art. Their promising careers were cut short by WWII. At that time the problem of national artistic expression was the main objective pursued by art in relation to political and social developments. One of the principal aims in the work of the Independents was the search for an independent (Slovenian) artistic expression. The undeniable fact that several of the works today enjoying cult status were premiered at their exhibitions testifies to the great artistry and continuing relevance of the Independent Artists who today rank among the leading names in 20th-century Slovenian and Yugoslav art. The exhibition includes seventy artworks and extensive documentary materials. Many of the works are on public view for the first time (in about 80 years since their creation). 

In addition to the Božidar Jakac Art Museum collection, artworks and materials were generously loaned by: the National Museum of Modern Art, Zagreb, the Museum of Modern Art, the City Museum Ljubljana (MGML), the Art Gallery Maribor, the National Gallery, the Slovene National Theatre Opera and Ballet Ljubljana, the Bela Krajina Museum Metlika, the Museum of Contemporary History of Slovenia, the National and University Library, St. Stanislaus Institute, Antikvitete Novak, Lah Contemporary, Galerija in dražbena hiša SLOART and various private collectors. 
The visual identity for the exhibition was created in cooperation with the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Ljubljana, which organized a student competition. The winners (Aja Vogrinčič, Juš Pustoslemšek, Matej Pavšek) created an overall visual identity for the exhibition. All competition entries are on view at Cankarjev dom.

Accompanying programme
As the Independents were greatly involved in the cultural and artistic scene of the time, the main thread of the accompanying programme is an illuminating insight into the era, the cultural, artistic and social backdrop to the work of the Independents, i.e., the 1930s and the first half of the 1940s, with an emphasis on Ljubljana, but in connection with other cultural hubs, e.g., Zagreb, Maribor, Ptuj, Celje, where the artists also worked. As well as the featured topics, several other areas of culture and the arts, including architecture, theatre, music, fashion, media and everyday life in Ljubljana, are examined in connection with fine art. In this context, the work of the Independents is explored also beyond the gallery walls, by highlighting some of the venues in Ljubljana associated with the group.

17 May 2022, CD Club 
International Symposium: Fine Arts in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia 

4 May – 12 June, CD Small Gallery
Plečnik's Ljubljana in Old Photographs
In cooperation with the Museum of Architecture and Design (MAO)
In the year that marks the 150th anniversary of the birth of architect Jože Plečnik, the photography exhibition aims to thematize the metamorphoses of the city.

Cankarjev dom has been organizing the Biennial of Slovenian Illustration together with the Union of Slovenian Fine Arts Associations – ZDSLU since 1993. This comprehensive overview of Slovenian illustration has been bringing together older and younger generations of illustrators for more than a quarter-century. The Hinko Smrekar award, as well as Hinko Smrekar plaques and accolades recognize the achievements of Slovenian illustrations.

Maintaining high standards of creativity and testifying to the excellence of Slovenian illustration, the event showcases new artistic approaches and the latest methods and techniques employed in illustration: re-imagined painting techniques, illustration incorporating elements of film, comic strip, animated film, electronic media and other advanced technologies.

The exhibition thus provides an invaluable platform for recognising the importance of illustration, an artform decisively co-shaping – in its major children’s book segment – the visual perception and understanding of young readers, and having a responsible role in education – as a pictorial language co-creating human consciousness and enhancing the development of artistic sensibility.

Previous winners of the Hinko Smrekar Award – the Biennial’s main prize – are: Marija Lucija Stupica (two-time winner), Dušan Muc, Rudi Skočir, Zvonko Čoh, Jelka Godec Schmidt, Alenka Sottler, Kostja Gatnik, Danijel Demšar, Peter Škerl, Hana Stupica, Damijan Stepančič and Milan Erič.


The exhibition is accompanied by an extensive catalogue featuring all participating artists and the Lifetime Achievement Award laureate. The Biennial’s visual identity is based on an illustration by the last recipient of the Hinko Smrekar Award, this time Milan Erič’s.

Slovenia’s legendary photojournalist Joco Žnidaršič belongs to the country’s oldest generation of photographers. As long-standing photography editor at a major national newspaper, he played a vital role in fostering visual sensibility in journalists, establishing high standards of press photography and encouraging young generations of photographers who worked for the Delo daily. The thirtieth anniversary of Slovenia's declaration of independence is an ideal opportunity to delve into Joco’s extensive oeuvre and display a representative selection of photos made during 1988–91 with a view to presenting how his images served to record the period that ushered the country into an age of great societal change. With his camera, Joco recorded virtually all watershed moments in those breakup years: from the JBTZ affair and massive demonstrations in the Congress Square, the Republic Square rally, Gorbachev in Slovenia and the last Congress of the League of Communists, the rallies for Slovenia, the referendum and the presidential elections, to the Brioni Agreement and the beginning of war. In some cases, when no other photographer was in the field, Žnidaršič had access to exclusive news: these pictures have a special documentary and archival value. In addition to famous historical scenes, the exhibition features a series of photographs that reveal, with exceptional visual eloquence and sensitivity, the photographer’s true humanistic character.

Born on 20 March 1938 in Šoštanj, Joco Žnidaršič graduated from the Faculty of Medicine in Ljubljana in 1963. He became involved in press and art photography during his studies and later devoted himself entirely to this pursuit. He worked as a photojournalist for the Študentska tribuna, TT and Tovariš, and from 1974 until his retirement, as a picture editor for the newspaper Delo.
In addition to his journalistic/photojournalistic work for newspapers and magazines, his output includes a series of excellent photography monographs that earned him recognition as one of Slovenia’s most prominent art and news photographers. His most notable photography monographs include: Foto Joco Žnidaršič, Ljubljana, Bohinj, Slovenski vinogradi, Pot k očetu (Himalayan travelogue), Dobimo se na tržnici, Golf na Slovenskem, Deset let je Slovenija država, Moja Slovenija, Lipicanci, Najlepša pot zeleni prstan Ljubljane and Ljubljana lepa in prijazna, which received widespread critical praise and favourable reception from the reading audiences.

He co-authored and edited another twenty photography monographs, most notably Zakladi Slovenije, Vojna za Slovenijo, Lepa Slovenija, Planica (Parts I and II) and Slovenija lepotica Evrope.
Joco Žnidaršič holds the title of Master Photographer of EFIAP, the highest distinction of the International Federation of Photographic Art. He has won more than fifty national and foreign awards and distinctions, including the Prešeren Fund Award, the Župančič Prize, the Puhar Lifetime Achievement Plaque, and Consortium Veritatis – the highest Slovenian award for achievements in journalism. He is the first Slovenian recipient of the "World Press Photo" prize. In 2009, the President of the Republic of Slovenia, Danilo Turk, awarded him the "Golden Order of Merit" for lifetime achievements in photography and for his great contribution to the visibility of Slovenia. In 2013, he was awarded the City of Ljubljana Prize, and in 2017 the President of the Republic of Slovenia, Borut Pahor, presented him with the "National Order of Merit" in recognition of his services in building national identity as a co-creator of and contributor to the “Slovenia my Homeland” campaign. He works as a freelance photojournalist and is co-owner of Veduta AŽ, d.o.o., which publishes photography monographs.

In accordance with the measures adopted to contain the spread of COVID-19 epidemic Cankarjev dom has cancelled or rescheduled all events, exhibitions reopened.

More about cancelled or postponed events >>

During his long career Henri Cartier-Bresson realised several hundreds of portraits, of famous personalities as well as unknowns. The exhibition comprises 121 portraits which he selected from among the negatives for his book Tête à Tête (1998). The earliest images from this series date from the thirties, the period during which he bought his first Leica and travelled around Europe with his friend André Pieyre de Mandiargues. This was when he started to define his photographic style.

All these portraits reflect the twentieth century, the richness of HCB’s work and his taste for literature and painting: from Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse and Simone de Beauvoir in the forties, through Marilyn Monroe, Alberto Giacometti and Coco Chanel in the sixties to Robert Doisneau in 1986. 

Through these portraits Henri Cartier-Bresson succeeds in capturing in one second the eternity of the eye, the “inner silence of a willing victim”.

In cooperation with the Henri Cartier-Bresson Foundation, Paris

Soloist: Jaka Mihelač, baritone

Programme
Leon Firšt, Refleksije*
Gustav Mahler, Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen
Jean Sibelius, Symphony No 1 in E minor, Op. 39

* First performance, commissioned by the Slovenian Philharmonic

Thirty-one-year-old Iranian conductor Hossein Pishkar won the German Conductors’ Award (Deutscher Dirigentenpreis) in 2017 as well as the Ernst von Schuch Prize. After studying the piano and composition in Tehran, he moved to Germany in 2012 to study conducting with Rüdiger Bohn, subsequently attending masterclasses with Riccardo Muti, Bernard Haitink and other renowned conductors. He gained experience as an assistant conductor with Hermann Bäumer, Sylvain Cambreling and Daniel Raiskin, performing operatic and symphonic works.

The programme of his debut with the Slovenian Philharmonic Orchestra will open with a new work by young Slovenian composer Leon Firšt. In his composition Refleksije (Reflections), the award-winning composer draws thematic material from the piano preludes by Lucijan Marija Škerjanc, as well as from his own compositions. This will be followed by Gustav Mahler’s four songs Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen (Songs of a Wayfarer), which the famous conductor and late-Romantic composer based on his own texts. Mahler reworked the sonic concept of the songs several times, conducting the premiere performance of the orchestral version in 1897. The concert will be rounded off by Jean Sibelius’s Symphony in E minor, the first of seven symphonies by the most important Finnish composer. It features numerous solo passages within the orchestra, beginning with a long introductory clarinet solo.
 

Cankarjev dom exhibitions are open Monday through Saturday between 12.00 and 19.00. Sundays closed.

The CD Gallery and other exhibition areas can be accessed through the employee entrance from Prešernova Street (Council of Europe Park).

In compliance with the guidelines of the National Institute of Public Health (NIJZ) on the gradual re-opening of museums, galleries and other exhibition areas visitors are required to observe the following instructions>>

Experience the exhibition with an audio guide.

On the anniversary of the birth of France Prešeren, on Tuesday, 3 December, tickets to the CD Gallery will be available at a uniform reduced price of EUR 4 per person.

The exhibition illustrates the inseparable connection between the development of Greek science and technology, focusing on mathematics, physics, astronomy and medicine among the scientific disciplines, and achievements in engineering, shipbuilding, architecture, telecommunications, hydraulics and the development of automatic machines and measuring devices in the field of technology.

Some of the most compelling showcased technical areas include architecture and construction technology, mathematics or geometry with Archimedean solids and Pythagorean theorem, mechanics with Archimedes’ screw, telecommunications with the hydraulic telegraph, astronomy and the famous mechanism from the island of Antikythera, automata and mobile automatic theatre, as well as music with hydraulis or water organ.  

The ancient Greeks’ most significant and long-lasting contributions to Western science and philosophy stemmed from their deeply inquisitive and curios mind. Great thinkers like Socrates (470–399 BC), Plato (427–347 BC) and Aristotle (384–322 BC) examined the issues that have puzzled mankind since time immemorial and discussed the questions of our origins, our future and whether pondering on these concerns is of any consequence.

The exhibition’s 3D-animations, interactive applications as well as replicas and scale models of ancient instruments help viewers gain an insight into the vast reservoir of technical knowledge acquired during the centuries of continuous Greek prosperity and development, which radically changed human life in several areas.