1984 was an auspicious year. In what was Orwell’s predicted dystopia, the Sarajevo Olympics marked a new economic boom in the historic city. Held in February 1984, the Winter Olympics elevated the locale in the eyes of the world beyond the site of the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand—which ignited the outbreak of the WWI—to a thriving center of sports, youth, culture and, most importantly, a friendly and hospitable people. It was eight years before the bloody “Siege of Sarajevo” in the Bosnian war with Yugoslavia, lasting from April 5, 1992 to Feb. 29, 1996.
The artifacts of those Olympic games were kept in the Olympic Museum, which was destroyed on April 27, 1992, during the siege. What was saved of these treasures was transferred to a new Olympic museum that opened in 2004 in the Zetra Olympic Hall during the 20th anniversary of the games.
This year, at the Academy of Fine Arts, the Museum in Exile (Muzej u Egzilu) launched a 40th-anniversary exhibition, It Was Fine in Sarajevo. The collection includes museum founder Asim Djelilovic’s collection of promo posters, standards manual, branded clothing and other memories of ’84’s “fine” (beautiful) period before the devastation of war. Also included are artworks (below) designed for the event by Milton Glaser, James Rosenquist, David Hockney, Andy Warhol, as well as Hunderwasser, Henry Moore and Frecesco Clemente.
Here is a sampling of what was assembled and preserved in the private collection of Djelilovic, which was donated to the Academy.
Design: Ismar Mujezinović
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