MGZ • Exhibitions

The Centennial of Zagreb City Museum, 1907-2007 / 100 / sto / C / cent / cento / hundred /... - CENTENNIAL

Exhibition concept: Željka Kolveshi
Exhibition design: Željko Kovačić
Poster design: Miljenko Gregl

The subtitle of the exhibition, which contains variations on the idea of the number "100", covers the history of Zagreb City Museum, which includes numerous years, addresses, officers, objects, people of Zagreb, donors and visitors to the museum, aimed at presenting, from various aspects, the work of the museum at the communication level back and forth between museum and public, and the material and intangible heritage of Zagreb assembled during the last century.

The first part of the exhibition, Zagreb City Museum during the 20th century, was a presentation of that part of the life of the museum lasting from 1907 until the full opening of the renovated building of the museum and the new permanent display in 1997. It started with a picture of Zagreb in 1907, when the museum was founded and opened in the Kamenita vrata Tower. Then came the period of the permanent interim state in the accommodation of the museum, in the south ground floor part of the Art Pavilion, from 1926 to 1945; of the museum at its temporary state at Opatička 8 in 1945 to 1946, and the move to the permanent address, at which it is to be found today, at Opatička 20, in 1947.

Every period is at once a sketch of the time in the conditions in which the museum was at work, appropriately followed by the objects on show that were accessioned in that period. At base, this is always concern for the memory of the city. For this occasion, objects have been selected that are a testimony of the connections and circumstances in which they arrived in the museum, and the emphasis was placed on persons and stories that link up the history of the primary context of an object, the original purpose and owner, and the secondary context, the expert study and interpretation, from the time it arrives in the museum.

The second part of the exhibition that was entitled In conjunction with the Centennial of Zagreb City Museum – UNKNOWNS reflected the implicit guidelines behind the collection of objects that privilege everyday objects and curiosities. Unknown, previously unexhibited, objects were grouped in four topic units characteristic of the interests of today's museum and the expectations of its visitors:

1. Witnesses to the everyday life of Zagreb
2. The world of children
3. Curiosities / features of interest
4. Archaeology generating new visions of the city.

The exhibition conveyed a simple and unified message: Zagreb City Museum has been a part of the life of Zagreb and Zagreb people for a hundred years.

Hence the exhibits were, side by side, artworks and bizarreries from the museum collections, as well as documentary exhibits from the hundred-year old archives and inventories of the museum, the photographs of famous and anonymous Zagreb people, museum officers in the museum and in their private lives. The live pictures of the first TV stories shown about the museum also told of the great changes in the last forty years or so: in the black and white recordings of museum events we discover the settings, atmosphere and substances of the incessant encounters of museum employees and the public because of which the museum exists. Synergy was the leitmotif of the exhibition.

Željka Kolveshi

Pictures from the exhibition

photo Miljenko Gregl, ZCM

Exhibition catalogue

Kolveshi, Željka. Centenary of Zagreb City Museum, 1907-2007 / 100 / sto / C / cent / cento / hundred /...
Zagreb : Zagreb City Museum, 2007