47th Children’s May Art Salon

The most important and oldest exhibition of children’s art in our city is being organized for the 47th time in a row, as a result of a successfully realized competition. The goal of organizing this traditional exhibition is to publicly present the most successful works created in school classes, emphasize the importance of art education, adequately evaluate the engagement and work of individual art pedagogues, and recognize the intellectual and creative potential of their students. The theme of this year’s Salon is “Motif from the Ibar”, according to the title of the painting by Miodrag B. Protić, whose centenary we are celebrating on May 10th. Miodrag B. Protić (1922–2014), one of the most important Serbian artists of the 20th century, art critic, founder and first director of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Belgrade. He was born in Vrnjačka Banja, and he finished high school in Kraljevo, right in the building where the National Museum Kraljevo is located today. As a gifted student, his first exhibition was organized there, and the work “Motif from the Ibar” is connected to that part of his life.

According to its rules, the Children’s May Art Salon implies the participation of elementary school students from 5th to 8th grade from the territory of the city of Kraljevo. The exhibition is of a competitive nature, and the awards are presented to children, but also to pedagogues who followed their work. The cooperation of the Museum’s curator with teachers, established at the beginning and during the participation in the competition, is important for the final result that we see in the final exhibition. The primary selection, ie the jury for the exhibition, is performed by art pedagogues, whose selection of works is evaluated by the Museum’s expert jury by awarding the prize for the best selection of student works and the prize for the most successful school in the field of art education. In addition to 9 equal awards that are given to the most creative and technically most successfully performed works, a special award is given, which is named “Milorad Mihailović” in honor of the art historian, the founder of this event.