On the occasion of the 670th anniversary of the city of Koprivnica, the exhibition Substitutes for Pleasure opened at Koprivnica Gallery, part of the Koprivnica City Museum, on 6 November 2026. At the opening ceremony, the guests were addressed by Ivan Valent, Director of the Koprivnica City Museum, and Branko Franceschi, Director of the National Museum of Modern Art. The exhibition's curatorial concept was presented by Marta Radman, curator at the National Museum of Modern Art and the exhibition's author, who also wrote the accompanying text for the bilingual catalogue published by the Koprivnica City Museum. The exhibition was officially opened by Mišel Jakšić, Mayor of Koprivnica.
The exhibition is part of NMMU on Tour, an ongoing programme through which the National Museum of Modern Art presents works from its collections at venues beyond its home premises – the Vranyczany-Dobrinović Palace – while the building undergoes renovation.
For this exhibition, which offers a thematic and critical reading of the National Museum of Modern Art's collection, curator Marta Radman has selected 25 works, bringing together pieces created in different historical, social and artistic contexts through a series of relationships: those between need and fulfilment, desire and prohibition, promise and postponement, lack and excess.
As the curator explains, pleasure rarely exists as the simple and definitive fulfilment of desire. It may take the form of satisfying a fundamental need, physical or emotional intimacy, a sense of security and belonging, faith, recognition, material comfort, aesthetic enjoyment or the hope of a different life. It can be immediate and physical, but equally anticipated, deferred, imagined or promised.
What is perceived as desirable, however, is never fixed. It is shaped by different social, economic, political and cultural circumstances. The history of art can therefore also be viewed as a history of changing ideas about what human beings lack, what they aspire to and the ways in which they seek to bridge the gap between need and its fulfilment.

Artists: Neda Blažević-Krietzman, Iris Bondora Dvornik, Joso Bužan, Marijan Detoni, Vilko Gecan, Stjepan Gračan, Krsto Hegedušić, Zlatko Kauzlarić-Atač, Nives Kavurić-Kurtović, Sonja Kovačić-Tajčević, Miroslav Kraljević, Anka Krizmanić, Dubravka Lošić, Nenad Marasović, Mato Celestin Medović, Omer Mujadžić, Ratko Petrić, Renata Poljak, Petar Smajić, Damir Sokić, Aleksandar Srnec, Miljenko Stančić, Mladen Stilinović, Milivoj Uzelac and Vlasta Žanić.

The exhibition has been organised with the support of the Ministry of Culture and Media of the Republic of Croatia, the City of Koprivnica and Koprivnica-Križevci County. It will remain on view until 15 January 2027.

Images: From the opening of the exhibition Substitutes for Pleasure, part of the NMMU on Tour programme, at the Koprivnica City Museum. Photo: Goran Vranić © National Museum of Modern Art, Zagreb.