Preserving the Past, Engaging with the Future: The Importance of Small Local Museums and Collections – A Look at the Heritage Collection of the City of Novska, Croatia (original) (raw)
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A museum object, sacred, yet fragile – a lesson of the Croatian museum transition
Traditionally, museums have often been considered the temples of culture, places where objects and collections stored are of great importance for a particular community, society or people and even the whole of humanity. Museum institutions have been trying to distance themselves from this image for decades, moving the focus from the objects to the visitors. This transformation occurred as the awareness of the social role of museums began to change, by which museums are no longer the absolute authority and their task not merely that of the “divine” study of museum “dogmas”, but rather they acquire a participatory role, making each individual a creator of meaning and values. This transition is perceived as a positive step in the development of museological thought and activity, but one that is also often criticized because it puts the position of museums and their experts and scientists in particular fields in a precarious position. Should museums allow their authority, considered to be based on scientific principles, to be questioned by visitors, that is, laypeople? In that regard, the position of museums can be viewed through the prism of the church and its respective position in society.
Heritage Users Research Croatia 2015
Preface This book might have been created out of somewhat prosaic reasons since its inception was planned far ahead in a form of final report on the Heritage Users Research project which was approved for funding by the Ministry of Science, Education and Sport in 2006. However, its chapters are formed not only by useful but interesting texts which resulted from various types of research, or maybe merely notes and analyses of experiences in the most propulsive museological field that deals with visitor or more broadly, user research, as well as investigations into the issues related to the contemporary paradigm of museums and similar institutions, most prominently the functions of communication and education. Possible problems regarding the term user, which we insisted on having as part of the research title, made themselves manifest in the form of a phone call placed by an owner of a cultural property who recognized herself as a heritage user. Regardless of potential misunderstandings, the term has been far from unknown in Croatian museum environment. It seems it was frequently used in the early 1980s, that is, in the beginning stages of introducing computers in the museum practice, which can be attested by the titles of unpublished texts by Dr. A. Bauer during the same period (Museologija no 31, 1994). Following that, in addition to the concept of museum information users, we believe the term heritage users today, in the 21 st century, can be used as having a much broader meaning than the term museum visitors, which entails either those of permanent and temporary exhibitions, workshops and lectures or visitors to museums' internet pages and other virtual content. Attention paid to both visitors and users has in the last several decades marked a shift in the understanding of museums, but also of museology as a scientific discipline whose research domain includes museums as institutional caretakers of heritage. The focal point of museum practice has most certainly changed its direction from museum or heritage objects to information about the objects whose importance was especially emphasized in the early phases of informatisation, and, finally, to the users/visitors/participants in heritage experience. It would be hard not to notice that the shift coincided with the growth of neo-liberal capitalism which made European and other western museums face limited financial resources and the pressure of ...
Museums "at the heart of community": local museums in the post-socialist period in Slovenia
Etnografica Revista Do Centro Em Rede De Investigacao Em Antropologia, 2007
The author tries to define the changing role of local or community museums in the last few decades, when the crisis of museum institutions became a fact and when museum institutions were very often labeled as "fossilised", "ossified" and conservative institutions, and that are now facing the ongoing fast social changes. He points out that Slovenian museums, in the last decade of socialist and post-socalist rule, have also gone through the same development. The first "incentives" for making necessary changes in museums and for using different methods and approaches came after 1980, mostly in local and regional museums, and most of the new approaches and efforts for transformation came from ethnologists. Finally, he describes his personal museum experience in three museum projects from 1993, 2000 and 2006 where he tries to "humanize" museum objects and solve some problems concerning "museum crisis".
Museums in Villages as Guardians of Family Memory and Cultural Heritage
2018
The paper examines the activities of the museum in the village of Pavelsko – history, traditions and modern state. The museum is in the village’s library and the exposition tells us about the life of the village from antiquity to the present day. This paper has been possible due to Project ДН15/4 of 11.12.2017 “Creating a Model for Preservation, Socialization and promotion of Orthodox Churches in Bulgaria” funded by the Bulgarian Science Fund.
Muzealnictwo, 2024
“Small” museums constitute one of the largest groups among Czech museums. This phenomenon corresponds to the situation in culturally developed countries with a longer museum tradition. The purpose of this article is to present “small” museums in the Czech environment and highlight their peculiarities. The research sample for our 2024 field research consisted of museums in Southern Moravia, which is not only one of the regions with the densest network of museums in the Czech Republic, but also one of the most typologically diverse. We focus on the management and administration of these small institutions and their activities.
Qualestoria, 2024
Looking at three museums: in Zagreb – Croatian History Museum –, and in Belgrade – Historical Museum of Serbia and Museum of Yugoslavia –, we analyze institutional narrative shifts during the dissolution of the country and the Yugoslav wars, and since 2010 till today. Using critical discourse analysis, embedded in memory studies, we analyze museums’ websites, and catalogues, complemented with ethnographic visits. While in the socialist Yugoslavia national historical museums had limited impact, during the 1990s they became actors of conflict narratives in the war-affected States, focusing on exhibitions reinforcing ethno-nationalist discourses, preserving the same narrative to the present. On the contrary, the Museum of Yugoslavia serves as an example of ambivalent politics towards socialist heritage, placing itself as a paradoxical hegemonic countermemory actor.
Futures and foresight of Croatian cultural heritage
Portal, 2022
In today's challenging time of political instability and climate change, the question of what to expect from the future is asked more frequently than ever. This question occurs in all segments of society, including those segments related to cultural heritage. When we mention the term 'cultural heritage', the first thing that we associate with it relates to the past, our identity, to legacies or to something we have inherited. We identify it mostly with something valuable and something that we must protect. In this paper the protection of cultural heritage will be moved to the future. The main question asked is whether current views on heritage preservation/protection will be valid in the future. This paper is primarily about anticipating the future, and not predicting it, by showing the methods and techniques that identify processes that could affect the future of heritage protection and management in the Republic of Croatia. Research and definition of trends have been carried out, in accordance with which this paper anticipates possible changes in the approach of people towards cultural heritage conditioned by social, economic, technical, ecological and political trends. Based on established trends, several scenarios are developed with certainties and uncertainties. Scenarios lead us to a consensus about what kind of future we want, and they point out the possible problems facing the modern world and their impact on heritage.