Address:1 Gen Gurko Str (entrance on Battenberg Str)
Working hours: Tues-Sat 10am-7pm, Sun 11am-5pm; Closed Monday
Tel: 987 21 81, http://sghg.cult.bg
Free entrance

It was the tail end of a Wednesday afternoon when I first entered the Sofia City Art Gallery, a building nestled on the corner of Gurko and Battenberg streets and cushioned by greenery on both sides. I had, however, been to the adjoining park a few times before and enjoyed its sculpture garden (and the ongoing chess rivalries on the far side of the park).

I strolled through the museum's tiny foyer. A pocket-sized bookshop to the right offered good-quality catalogues, mostly of previous exhibits. The next set of doors opened onto a big, well-lit space, where I was hit between the eyes with large-scale photographs courtesy of Benetton, on the occasion of the apparel company's 40th anniversary and featuring its provocative (and sometimes disturbing) ad campaign imagery.

Moving from this roomful of huge ads whose candy colours often belied their themes (domestic violence, AIDS, racism, mental illness), I entered a second large room to the right, where there was an exhibition of (considerably smaller) traditional oil landscapes and portraits by the Bulgarian painter Atanas Zhekov (1926 - 2006). A shift in mood, to say the least - although I did pick up a few hints of Benetton-brightness in some of Zhekov's works.

Six o'clock came and went, and things in both rooms suddenly got a little livelier. I was glad to see, on this weekday evening, people of all ages streaming in alone or in small groups, walking around and commenting on the art.

Back near the main entrance, an unobtrusive staircase with an equally unobtrusive sign indicated another level with another exhibit. Upstairs in a third white expanse — this time with a stone floor and skylights — were the works of another contemporary Bulgarian artist, Andrei Yanov. Given that Yanov's paintings were of a spiritual nature (inspired as they were by his journey to Mount Athos, located on the northmost peninsula of Macedonia in Greece and considered to be the center of Orthodox monasticism), it seemed fitting that they be in this upper room, their gold-infused lightness a quiet contrast to Benetton's worldly din.

I returned the next day and discovered that, next to Atanas Zhekov's paintings, a joint exhibition of contemporary three-dimensional works had been added, featuring Nadia Rozeva Green's medals with their gracefully curvilinear details and Anastasia Andreeva's industrial-style metal-and-glass sculptures (some fitted with optical lenses which, upon closer examination, turned the view of the room upside-down).

Given the diversity of these four exhibitions, it was obvious that in these rooms, the past and the present were being celebrated equally. This is a place that understands art as a continuing process.

The mission of Sofia City Art Gallery has always been to collect, catalogue and promote Bulgarian art and artists, with a mind toward historical preservation. In 1928, the mayor of Sofia decreed that the city establish a museum that was also to include a library, an archive and a gallery. This was originally located in a building (which has since been demolished) near the corner of Graf Ignatiev and Rakovski streets. The following year, Kosta Vulev, the first curator of the Municipal Museum, began collecting paintings, drawings and sculptures, primarily by Sofia artists and which depicted the city and its people. He found worthy works from a wide variety of places, including a municipal building attic. The director of the National Archaeological Museum agreed to let him take some art for which there was no place in the state museum. Additional support came from King Boris III, who gave Vulev permission to exhibit items from the royal art collection. Thanks to Vulev's efforts and the support of authorities on so many levels, the collection was off to a good start.

In 1941, the museum and its library, archive and gallery relocated to a municipal building at 3 Banski Square. It reopened as the Sofia City Library and Museum and became the first permanent exhibition gallery in Bulgaria. Seven years later, it was one of several museums to contribute part of its collection to the new National Art Gallery. The Sofia City Art Gallery established itself as an independent institution in 1952 and, in 1973, took up residence at its current address of 1 Gurko Street — in a building that once housed the Sofia Casino.

The permanent collection started by Kosta Vulev in 1929 currently includes over 7000 paintings, drawings and sculptures by past generations of artists. In 2000, the museum's mission expanded to catalogue and promote the work of living, active Bulgarian artists. A fund for the collection of contemporary art and photography was established in 2004, and many items in this collection have been donated by the artists themselves. The museum has also offered opportunities for young artists interested in contemporary art to display and discuss their work.

There are about 30 exhibitions a year, some of which are assembled from the museum's permanent collection and some of which are of contemporary two- and three-dimensional works, videos and installations by artists from Bulgaria and other countries. Sofia City Art Gallery not only offers visitors a lesson in Bulgarian art history, it's also one of the best places to see consistently high-quality contemporary art.