Terra Museum

The manège building consists of two interconnected units – the main part of the building is higher and spatially more dominant in relation to the annexe, which is significantly lower, enabling the functional division of space.  

At the initiative of the founder of the International Symposium of Large-Scale Terracotta Sculptures – Terra, professor and academic sculptor Slobodan Kojić, the Kikinda Municipality bought the old military barracks from the Serbian Armed Forces and changed their purpose.

In December 2017 Terra Museum in Kikinda was opened in the former manège building of the Kikinda military barracks. Due to its significance, the Kikinda manège is deserving of protection as an object of technical excellence. 

The Terra collection is a unique world mosaic of styles, all expressed through the unity of materials, clay - terracotta. The collection provides a basis for gaining insight into all important phenomena, poetics, authors and works. 

Some of the works personify emblematic personalities of their time, as well as social themes. Moving across from figurative to abstraction, these are pieces that express the poetics of their time and the taste of a society troubled by aesthetic and cultural conflicts. 

The complete, well-organized, architecturally attractive and compact manège space of about 2100 square meters, with good natural and adequate artificial lighting, was turned into an ideal museum space that is fully adequate for the uniqueness of terracotta sculptures. 

The Terra Museum exhibition display is dominated by monumental sculptures.  Collection presents works by sculptors that marked the development of world art history in field of terracotta in last four decade. 

The works of gallery format alternate, gathered in the four corners of the Museum, with monumental and more intimate sculptures, placed on pedestals or directly on the ground, without being divided by generations or nationalities of the sculptors, without being grouped by topic 

Panoramic view from the center of the permanent exhibition. 

The exhibition "Terra - the Last YU Decade" was part of the 38th International Symposium of  Terra Sculpture. Sculptures of sculptors from all over the former country, created in the last, pre-war decade of the 20th century, show a slightly different sensibility of artists.  

In the annexe of the building, right next to the main entrance, there is a small gallery space (about 70 square meters), the so-called Salon of the Terra Museum, intended for occasional autonomous exhibition. 

Detail of the exhibition / installation by Jelena Kovačević Vorgučin, „String“ 2020.  The work "connection - bound - thread - string" conveys a personal, but also a universal story about the fragile threads of life.  

Author deals with the problem of the passage of time and the universal theme of tying, unwinding, tying, untying, separating and reuniting several generations within family, by a symbolic representation through threads of woolen ball. 

The projection of the hands, the red thread and the woolen ball, is replaced by equally long and melancholic frames of the landscape scene of the seemingly calm stagnant water of the Danube, which is nevertheless hindered by unexpected movement. 

Opening of the exhibition "Sculpture in terracotta from the Terra collection - figuration". 

The exhibition "Sculpture in terracotta from the Terra collection - figuration".