The Museum Building

Abstract

The Prince Paul Museum in Belgrade (1935-1941), opened in a former royal residence of the late King Alexander I Karadjordjević, was a prime example of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia's representative culture. The supposed principal agenda of the museum was to provide Belgrade, as the capital of a multi ethnic and multi cultural state which was on the cusp of the national crisis, with a representative national museum that would exhibit the masterpieces of European and Yugoslav art. However, the crucial museum's role in the ideological landscape of the time was to construct a desired identity of Yugoslavia, the one that would conform the dominant ideological postulates of Yugoslavism during the period of regency.