Museum of Macedonia opens exhibition "Colors of Freedom"

The exhibition "Colors of Freedom" opened on 8 September 2026 at the Museum of Macedonia, timed to mark the 35th anniversary of the country's independence.

The project was initiated by curators from the museum’s history and art history departments: Maria Petkovska, Tatjana Trajkovic, Aneta Popantoska and Zdravko Stojkovski. Other museum collaborators also took part in preparing the show, Museum director Aleksandar Ristevski said.

"They initiated an interesting interdisciplinary project, where we cover many historical photographs, artifacts, documents and objects, together with a large part of the most important authors of modern Macedonian art, which we have in the museum's collection," Ristevski said.

Three thematic pillars

The exhibition presents the combative and creative traditions that form a lasting legacy of Macedonian statehood and identity. It is structured around three foundations: the ideal of Ilinden, the victims of the National Liberation War, and the will of citizens for an independent state as expressed in the 8 September 1991 referendum. Paintings and sculptures by first- and second-generation founders of the modern Macedonian visual scene, together with displayed artifacts, communicate historical, social and aesthetic messages.

"These works remind us that freedom is the most valuable inheritance we have and that it always requires that we preserve, respect and develop it," Tatjana Trajkovic, curator in the Museum of Macedonia’s History of Art sector, said.

"They convey the energy of generations of revivalists, revolutionaries, partisans and artists, who have left an indelible mark on the construction of the modern Macedonian cultural identity," said Maria Petkovska, curator in the History of Art sector.

The exhibition will remain open for the next two months, a period during which the Museum of Macedonia will also mark 50 years since the construction of the building it occupies.

Photo: press material from the event