The founders of the citizens' association "Vidosav Club" were students of Vidosav Stevanović's 2009 writing school, several of his readers and friends. We turned an old English-style barn into a modern multifunctional space of over a hundred square metres where literary launches, chamber concerts, painting exhibitions, small theatre performances and gatherings of friends and admirers can be held.
The Club opened on 28 June 2009 before many guests and with a varied programme. Except for two winters — heating was only installed this winter — something has been happening continuously here.
The books that aren't there
Conceived as a cultural and educational institution, the Club has since 2009 organised programmes of the most varied content, with the desire to affirm the values of civic, multicultural and multi-ethnic society, expressed through the spirit of creativity, tolerance, truthfulness and justice.
In this way we have reached 90 organised programmes, in various forms of creative work, with more than 100 guests and participants — from Serbia and also from Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Slovenia, Hungary, France, the United Kingdom and the USA.
During 2014 and 2015 the Club was renovated and extended, so that now as a self-contained whole "under one roof" it exists on 350 m², also using the auxiliary spaces of the courtyard and the parking.
Becoming ever more active and open to new authors and ideas, the Club thus fulfils the vision of its founders, the writer Vidosav Stevanović and the actress Marija Vasiljević, on whose estate it lives.
Why a foundation?
In my long literary life and my considerably shorter public one, I have come to know many endowments, trusts, foundations, legacies, bequests, museums, memorial houses and memorial rooms. From sumptuous edifices and museums whose exhibits were chosen by specialists pompously called experts, through houses in which artists once lived, to little heaps of dusty books in the remote basements of national libraries.
I have become convinced that there are three main reasons, three motives for founding such institutions, which I call foundations.
The first, the best known and most celebrated in our civilisation, is the remembrance and preservation of the name of a founder who has only one connection with culture: works of art and cultural treasures that were not created by the one who bought them and set them before the public eye.
The appropriation of esteemed names and significant works, and their use as decoration for an undeserved and uglily egocentric posthumous fame. In essence it is the impersonal mechanics of capital, which is thus preserved, increased or protected from wear, excessive squandering, inflation, political change, ideological madness and its innate weakness: disappearance. For no capital lasts or can last for centuries.
The second is the gathering, collecting, impassioned and at times extravagant attempt of individuals, families and groups to pass on to their descendants and to those like them in the future what they have bought, gathered, acquired and consider precious, unique or rare.
In some respects it resembles the first, for the collector is neither a creator nor a continuator of the master's work, but only an enraptured admirer. And it differs in many respects, for it does not rest solely on money but on passion, persistence, respect and devotion. The collector does not attribute to himself nor corrupt what he wishes to preserve. Collectors worthy of the name invest in their collections and bequests not only money, social power and political influence, but also their time, knowledge, critical thought, patience, resourcefulness and love. In short, themselves.
The third reason, the third motive, is the rarest, though it ought to be the most common. The creator himself, the artist, the master, the one from whose spirit the work arose, who devoted to it his days and nights, half his youth, the greater part of his maturity and the last flickers of his old age, strives — with the means at his disposal, which are always lesser than his designs — to preserve his work from ruin, disappearance and oblivion. What is in him personal, inward, unique and unrepeatable, from what is external, chaotic, accidental, unfavourable, consciously destructive and materially insurmountable.
So that he may leave behind him, instead of a testament or as its supplement, as the only legitimate justification for this last use of his name, and protect and show to at least some future generation what he did, how he did it, what he created, what he completed. Something that may perhaps be of worth to someone else too, in the brief seconds of our ephemeral physical existences.
And to be convinced, to expect, to hope that he will succeed in this mad endeavour, if only by a ratio of one in a million.
With this modest, self-loving and altruistic intention — you may observe and judge it from any side and you will be right — the Vidosav Foundation came into being six years ago. In the village of Botunje, in the heart of Šumadija, on the slope of a hill from which one can see the village where I was born, on the estate of my life's companion and wife, the actress Marija Vasiljević, in a building constructed for that very purpose, with the help of our sons and friends, with the support of our visitors and without any participation of the republic's or the city's cultural institutions.
It is always open to all people of good will and pure intentions. Of which you may convince yourselves.
Vidosav Stevanović
May 2026
Governance
Petar Arbutina — administrator of the Vidosav Foundation
Stevan Stevanović — permanent secretary
Board members
Marija Vasiljević
Srđan Paunović
Mirko Demić
Nadežda Stojanac
Ljubomir Branković
Nevena Stevanović
Supervisory board
Nenad Božić
Bojan Kolak
Marija Lazić