The uncritical and unscientific rejection of candidates for the Montenegrin Academy of Sciences and Arts (CANU) is not an exception, but a symptom of a deep institutional crisis. It is a practice that undermines the fundamental principles of any serious academy: objectivity, meritocracy, transparency and accountabilityWhen these principles are suspended, the Academy ceases to be an authority on knowledge and turns into a closed circle of power.
If candidates are not evaluated according to clearly defined and publicly verifiable criteria, but are eliminated without explanation or based on personal and arbitrary reasons, CANU loses its legitimacy to present itself as the highest scientific and artistic institution in the country. This is no longer academic decision-making, but voluntarism disguised as authority.
The consequences of such a model are serious and long-term: top creators are discouraged; the message is sent that knowledge, expertise, years of work, sacrifice, and even international recognition are not decisive in the co-optation of new members. The image of CANU as a closed private club is reinforced. Thus, the development of science and art in Montenegro becomes hostage to internal interests, academic clientelism, social Darwinism, local megalomania - and in some cases - worrying spiritual neglect.
An illustrative example of such incompetence is the case from Lexicon of fine arts of Montenegro in the CANU edition, where the academician from the Department of Art, in charge of the project, was unable to stylistically distinguish the works of two sculptors and attributed the work of the second author to me. This is a "mistake" for which I received neither an explanation nor an apology - neither from CANU, nor from the project leader. At some other academies, such an excess would result in the automatic withdrawal of the lexicon.
PERSONAL EXPERIENCE OF DISQUALIFICATION AND IGNORANCE
I personally experienced the system of voluntary disqualification as a candidate for CANU. After passing the expert vote in the Department of Art, in the second round I did not receive any analytical evaluation of my work. Instead of an expert assessment, I was greeted by an organized verbal campaign by two "agile" academics. Not with arguments, but with pressure.
The reasons given for my disqualification as a candidate were neither based on academic fair play nor in accordance with the Statute of the Academy of Sciences and Arts. Three years later, the same pattern, by the same actors, was repeated this time in the form of claims that I should be rejected because the Academy "should not spend money on me", questions of "what benefit does Montenegro have from him?!", and even rude remarks about where I live - all in a letter addressed to the members of the Academy.
Such a disqualifying practice of rejecting candidates based on the "right" that some can and some cannot receive an academic privilege, regardless of professional achievements, calls into question the fundamental issue of equal rights for all citizens of Montenegro.
After all, if one insists on the "principle of the primordial right" to an academic allowance - which was one of the key reasons for my disqualification hysterically promoted by Academician Đurović - elementary consistency would dictate that one should start from one's own income. Comparative data shows that the monthly allowances of CANU to Academician Đurović are many times higher (as much as thirteen times) than the allowances of French academics (113 euros!). Everything else is demagogy.
IGNORE INTERNATIONAL REFERENCES
It is particularly problematic that such decisions were made despite my international credentials. Six French academics, leading French intellectuals, wrote about my work, including a philosopher and thinker of planetary influence like Alain de Benoist, whom Danilo Kiš admired. Recommendations for CANU came from sculptor and former president of the French Academy Claude Abeille, as well as from Vladimir Veličković, a French academic and head of the department at the École nationale des Beaux-arts in Paris. Veličković wrote in his recommendation: "It would be an honor for CANA to welcome an artist and personality like Zlatko Glamočak into its ranks"Professor emeritus of the Sorbonne, member of the European Academy and former president of the French Academy, Georges-Henri Soutou, stated in his recommendation for DANU: "The drawings and sculptures of Glamočak are the most expressive things I've seen in my life", while Đorđe Kadijević wrote in NIN on the occasion of the exhibition MADE in SFRY (1997): "No, this kind of exhibition has never been seen in Belgrade".
My work has been included in international reference monographs, such as Sculpture of the 20th Century, with the names of Picasso, Giacometti, Brancusi, Damien Hirst, Richard Serra and Jeff Koons, Cesar, Joseph Beuys, etc. From the former Yugoslavia, only Marina Abramović, Dušan Džamonja and myself are included in these and other editions. I have exhibited at major international exhibitions by invitation, with artists such as Basquiat, Keith Haring, Helmut Newton, Dali, Jackson Pollock, etc.; presented at conferences such as Transgression of the body at the French Academy with works by Van Gogh, Edvard Munch, Egon Schiele, Francis Bacon, Lucian Freud, etc. I have exhibited in more than 400 reference collective and 40 solo exhibitions.
On the basis of what knowledge and what professional standards all these arguments were ignored - and nine years later - it remains unclear. Even more controversial is that the final word on my admission (read rejection) was held by academics for whom art is not a profession, and who see art mainly as a 'weekend pastime'. Their assessment is unmeritorious, without any foundation and knowledge, placed above the assessments and knowledge of internationally recognized authorities in the field of art or philosophy.
The case of the potential candidate Pejović and the two rejected candidates Kalaj and Mićunović in the last elections unequivocally confirms this thesis. The crucial and principled question is: on what basis do academics, whose knowledge of art and theater is inferior even to beginner students of drama or art academies, arbitrate and reject director Mićunović, an artist with fifty years of experience and a university professor at the Faculty of Dramatic Arts?!
THE NEED FOR REFORM
Because of all the above, a fundamental, radical structural reform of CANU, including:
- full autonomy of the Art Department in relation to other departments, following the French model;
- a limited number of members in CANU and the occupation of an academic chair in a certain field only after the death of the academic who held that position;
- mandatory public presentation of candidates and clearly defined, written and publicly verifiable evaluation criteria signed by each academic;
- to introduce a recommendation from foreign academics of international renown as a requirement for applying for membership, in addition to local or regional.
Without radical reform and a return to the criteria objectivity, meritocracy, transparency and accountability, CANU risks remaining, despite the honorable individuals in its ranks, an institution that primarily protects its own privileges, local academics, and not the public interest and meritocracy.
Otherwise, the question Quo vadis, CANU? will no longer be polemical - but historical.
Finally, I will use a quote from Brigitte Terziev, sculptor and member of the French Academy: "As a sculptor and member of the French Academy, I claim that the sculptures of my colleague Glamočak are great sculptural works that occupy a special place in the world of contemporary sculpture.". To recognize such a stated place in art, however, requires a special spirit, brave, open, and aesthetically sovereign, curious, I admit - rarely available. A spirit that, unfortunately, is not detectable in a certain number of academics within the CANU circle. Their persistent myopia does not cast a shadow on my work, but persistently and precisely illuminates the limits of their own understanding and the wanderings in this prestigious institution.
The author is a sculptor and a regular member of DANU and BANU.
Bonus video:
