The Pedagogical Academy was founded in Maribor in 1961, and already in its first study year, students were able to enrol in the art pedagogy program. In this time, when the idea about establishing the University of Maribor was still being developed, its creators understood the importance of art literacy in primary school education. Moreover, with this study program, they also enabled an overall increase of art culture in Maribor and its wider outskirts.

In the study year of 2011/2012, third-year students of Art History at the Faculty of Arts, University of Maribor, established a fruitful collaboration with MKC Maribor Youth Culture Centre under the mentorship of Assoc. Prof. Dr. Marjeta Ciglenečki. In the scope of the subject Practical Training, they prepared an exhibition in the Media Nox Gallery and the Exhibition Hall of the Faculty of Arts. The content of the exhibition were the artistic successes of former students of Maribor’s Art Pedagogy. We have been discovering for quite some time just how important the Department of Fine Arts (former Department of Art Pedagogy) at the Faculty of Education (formerly Pedagogical Faculty), University of Maribor, has been and still is as an art centre. Numerous well-known artists are among its former students, whose works were the subject of young art historians’ seminar papers.

The exhibition titled 2x19-a was prepared within the European Youth Capital Maribor 2013 project and presented Slovene artists under the age of 35, who were either in their last stage of formal schooling or had already established themselves in the contemporary Slovene visual arts scene.

The research project connects the learning of iconographic analysis, i.e. studying the content of artwork, with learning about and understanding the monuments in Maribor. The students discussed individual iconographical topics by searching for examples in Maribor’s art historical heritage.

The exhibition was prepared as a result of The Monument to Franz Joseph for the Maribor Cadet School research-exhibition project, which the France Stele Institute of Art History ZRC SAZU carried out in 2011 for the Ministry of Defence of the Republic of Slovenia (The Doctrine, Development, Education and Training Command, Military Museum of Slovenian Armed Forces).

Throughout the Middle Ages the Diocese of Lavant possessed a small area of land with a mostly German speaking population. Nevertheless, over the course of centuries, the small seed grew and bore rich fruit, at first in a religious, spiritual sense, as well as in the field of culture and the strengthening of Slovene national awareness.