The World of Art as an educational program was introduced in 1997. It was developed out of a need for theoretical and practical education in the field of contemporary visual art and which no university program in Slovenia offers. Formal education in art history has included neither contemporary production nor the art theory of the 20th and 21st Century and the young experts have mainly turned towards past periods due to their lack of knowledge and apparatuses for decoding contemporary tendencies in art. In the nineties, art production in Slovenia formed an important agent in cultural and social processes and was also integrated into international scene, while the theoretical and curatorial apparatuses lagged behind. In response, the World of Art program brought a series of public lectures, which shed some light upon the artistic practices and art theories significant for the understanding of contemporary arts. As a unique program in this field, it also offered a course for curators of contemporary art, enabling participants to gain knowledge necessary to perform the work of a contemporary art curator.

In the first year, the World of Art program was organised by the Škuc Gallery. In 1998 it became the program of the Soros Center for Contemporary Arts - Ljubljana and gained a specific international character thanks to the Centre's extensive international links, especially within the Region (Central and Eastern Europe, the Balkans and the newly formed countries of the former Soviet Union). This was also the year in which the course, i.e. the eight-month-long process of conceptualising and setting up the contemporary art exhibition, was prolonged to ten months and upgraded with study trips abroad, offering participants the opportunity to look beyond the borders of the local situation and familiarize themselves with the variety of various methods, approaches and techniques of operation in the art system and art milieus of neighbouring countries.

In its seventh year of operation the educational program World of Art grew into School for Contemporary Art. It is composed by the course for curators with final exhibition, seminar in writing, series of lectures and a yearly anthology.

With its complex structure the World of Art is a unique theoretical and practical educational school in Slovenia and in a boader Region (Central, Eastern and South Europe): it has established the mechanisms necessary for reflective operation in the world of art, and has been continuously developing and adapting to the rapid changes emerging in the art world and social conditions. With years a >learning process< has been extended and now reaches into the artists' studios, exhibitions set up by curators and the offices of the gallerists. The tasks that the participants of the school have to accomplish and the experiences they gain are a good send-off for the future.

The program of the school is conceived in yearly cycles establishing in such a way a professional reflection, i.e. curatorial and critical practices - the part of the art system that is indispensable for any relevant and active artistic production and is in the Slovene milieu with no doubt underdeveloped. We thought that only such a systematic and complex program could bring about necessary structural changes, which has already been proven with evidence in practice after nine years of operation.

The success of the World of Art program is proven by the numbers of successful course participants: so far 60 have completed the course and many of them have already found work, some almost immediately after the completion of the course, either in state and regional institutions, art centers and galleries, while others are active as independent curators, also in the international arena. This is a clear indicator that the pioneering course for curators for contemporary art which is the only course in Slovenia and the broader region offering theoretical knowledge and practical experience from this increasingly popular and demanding profession, offers the opportunity for experts to do serious work and operate in the field of contemporary art.

The seminar in writing is a more recent segment introduced to stimulate texts on contemporary art and initiate new discourses and methods of recording and historicizing contemporary artistic practices. In the first three years 16 young students visited the seminar, mostly from the circle of the previous participants of the course. In 2005, we have established a co-operation with Likovne besede (Artwords) magazine to launch a permanent "World of Arts" rubric in which the texts produced in frame of the seminar are published. Similarly, some of the "seminar" texts are also broadcast on Radio Student (Ljubljana).

Within the frame of the thematic series of lectures (organised also in Croatia, Slovakia and other cities in Slovenia in cooperation with our partners) 42 Slovene and foreign lecturers presented their view on the individual topic relevant for understanding of the complex world of contemporary arts, and their curatorial, theoretical and artistic practice, which introduced unique models of reflective and responsible operation.

Five bilingual anthologies have offered the achievements of each year of the school in a written form thus preserving them also for our descendents.

As the years went by, the World of Art was becoming increasingly complex and was also logically placed within the conceptually rounded up operation of the SCCA-Ljubljana. Namely, the Center with its programs is systematically establishing an expert platform for contemporary arts, which is of vital importance for the balance between the artistic production and practice, the critical and curatorial reflections, the expert reception and the respond by the general public.