Nonaligned World Opens in Belgrade's Unfinished Dome

The concrete walls of the Museum of African Art’s dome never took the shape architects envisioned in the late 1980s. Nearly four decades later, those same bare walls have become part of the display itself: in the dome where the exhibition “Nonaligned World” opened on September 2, the unfinished state is not hidden away but put on show. Panels carrying documents and photographs stand alongside concrete that has remained unfinished since the second half of the 1980s, when Belgrade was preparing to host the Ninth Conference of the Non-Aligned Movement.

The occasion is the 65th anniversary of the First Conference of the Non-Aligned Movement, held in Belgrade on September 1, 1961, marked a day earlier, on September 1, 2026, by a commemorative meeting. The Museum of African Art describes the exhibition as a bridge across time: from the founding conference in 1961, through the movement’s last Belgrade summit in 1989, to today’s questions of cooperation and solidarity among countries of the Global South. Three points in time, carried by one space that bears all of them, literally within its own architecture.

The exhibition was curated by a team from the Museum, Emilia Epstein, Ana Knezevic and Milica Naumov, together with Nemanja Radonjic, a professor at the Faculty of Philosophy of the University of Belgrade. The idea dates back to 2021, and the documentary material was provided by the Historical Archives of Belgrade, the Archives of Yugoslavia, the Institute for the Protection of Cultural Monuments, the Belgrade City Museum, the Museum of Yugoslavia, RTS, Radio Belgrade and Filmske novosti (Film News), institutions that hold what has survived from that period in written, recorded or photographed form.

What sets this display apart from a typical historical exhibition is that the space it occupies is not just a backdrop but a participant in the story. Construction of the dome began just as the movement whose legacy the exhibition honors was at its height, and it was left unfinished at the very moment that movement lost its footing, with the end of the Cold War and the breakup of Yugoslavia. In the process, the Museum has preserved, perhaps without meaning to, a parallel that would be hard to stage on purpose: architecture that stopped halfway as testimony to a project that itself was never completed.

Museum director Marija Aleksic said at the opening that “the Museum’s dome was built at a time when Belgrade was preparing for the last summit of the Non-Aligned Movement,” adding that she “hopes the announced works will begin soon, and that the Museum will get the conditions it deserves.” The remark carries weight because it follows project documentation for the building’s reconstruction, which, according to the Museum, has already been prepared, alongside assurances from the relevant institutions that work could start soon.

The timeline behind that hope is not arbitrary. Next year, in 2027, the Museum of African Art marks half a century since it was founded, and Belgrade will host the World Specialized Exposition EXPO 2027 that same year, with around fifty African countries having confirmed participation so far. If the reconstruction does end up coinciding with that anniversary, the dome that stood for three decades as a monument to incompleteness will become a monument to something else, though judging by the pace of work so far, that outcome remains far from settled.

For now, the dome remains what it is: a space that tells the story of two eras at once, of 1961 and 1989, out of which it was built, and of 2026, in which it has finally found an audience. The exhibition can be visited with guided tours as part of the “Week at MAU” program, on September 13, 20 and 27 at 11 a.m., and it is accompanied by a digital map of Non-Aligned heritage at nesvrstani.rs.