-Messenger photo by Hans Madsen
Eric Anderson, director of the Blanden Memorial Art Museum, looks at the website for the Kosovo Art Exchange Gallery in Mitrovica, Kosovo. Anderson has been selected to jury their upcoming show “Home.”

Eric Anderson, director of the Blanden Memorial Art Museum, is going to be helping out another museum soon with selecting pieces for an upcoming show with the working title of “Home.”

He might not get to visit the gallery and see it actually hung, though.

It’s in Kosovo.

Anderson’s jury duty with the Kosovo Art Exchange Gallery in Mitrovica began with some internet scanning, emails and finally, a phone call.

“They asked if I would jury their next exhibit called “home,” Anderson said. “I said yes, that would be awesome.”

Mitrovica is located in the northern region of the country. Anderson said it’s not noted for its stability. The nearby border with Serbia is still in dispute and NATO troops still help keep the peace.

His job sounds simple.

“Say we can fit 20 pieces,” he said. “It’s up to the juror to decide what direction he wants to go. In this case, I ask myself what do I think about when I think of home. The rubric is the idea of home.”

Home might have a much different meaning and be represented differently by artists working in a country touched by wars that are still in many peoples living memories.

He saw some of that when he visited Kosovo.

“We saw home after home in the middle of unmowed fields that were boarded up and shuttered next to houses empty and gutted and homes started and not finished,” he said.

A lot the people in the region fled to Germany and Switzerland, he said. Many have yet to return or only come back on occasion to visit.

Anderson is proud to be part of the project.

“It’s a great honor for us,” he said. “It helps extend the idea of international cooperation. It shows Fort Dodge is engaged and we have a passion.”

Anderson has yet to see the works being submitted for the show. He’s expecting it via email.

“By the end of May I should get a Zip file or a link. I’m really excited,” he said. “They have a lot of great artists.”

He would like to see exchanges like his jury work grow.

“I hope it extends past the Mitrovica metro area,” he said.

Several of the individual staff at the museum in Mitrovica are from the U.S.

“Their executive director is Jacqueline Dulin,” Anderson said. “She’s amazing, she’s worked with the Smithsonian and the Holocaust Museum and she runs her own studio.”

The process may end up working the other way, too. Anderson is considering asking the museum in Kosovo to help him jury an upcoming show of analog photography.