engleski

Musealization Process(es) of Dispossessed Artworks in Croatia during and after the Second World War

Despite the fact that the crucial archival material was inaccessible and completely unavailable for research, in a number of cases TransCultAA research in Croatia has revealed hitherto hidden fate of private collections not only during the fascist regime of The Independent State of Croatia (1941-45) but within the new Yugoslav legal system, which created a framework for transferring private property into state ownership through confiscation, expropriation, and nationalization, followed by musealisation. Only a few weeks ago, access to the documents was granted, as a direct outcome of the persistent research efforts of the Croatian TransCultAA team and the huge general impact that TransCultAA has exercised, raising public awareness and, at the same time, demonstrating the need to further investigate contested histories. Therefore, in this paper we will try to give insight into the new possibilities of research, following the circumstances of the transfer of specific objects from the private collection to their musealisation after the WWII (in the light of „new“ documents) to illuminate the process(es) of dispossessions and susequent musealisation, and their consequences on the changes of symbolic meaning of objects.

KOMZA, Museum of Arts and Crafts in Zagreb, Strossmayer Gallery of Old Masters, private art collections, castle Novi Dvori, castle Veliki Bukovec

Research for this paper has been carried out in the framework of the HERA project 15.080 TransCultAA (www.transcultaa.eu). This project has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 649307.