engleski

Photographic Heritage at the Strossmayer Gallery of Old Masters

The Strossmayer Gallery of Old Masters of the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts is one of the oldest museums in Croatia, that reflects the development of art history and of art conservation as scholarly disciplines in Croatia. Photographic material preserved in its holdings is striking though still neglected evidence of its historical development, and at the same time an important cultural property itself, which requires appropriate attention and care. Despite the fact that „Schneider's Photo Archive of the Croatian Old Monuments“, which emerged as result of photographic campaign Gallery's director Artur Schneider undertook 1930-1941 all around Croatia, is very well known to Croatian art historians and conservators because of its documentary values, that collection requires yet to be properly catalogued and subjected to appropriate academic scrutiny. While digitisation process of Schneider's Photo Archive poses many challenges (technical infrastructure, cataloguing standards, digital preservation policy, intellectual property laws...) it also indicates the importance of raising awareness on preservation of other photographic material, dispersed in the Gallery's holdings as of the 'secondary' value. Systematic preventive conservation and re- valuation of photographic heritage in the Strossmayer Gallery's holdings hopefully will evolve a suitable paradigm for gathering dispersed material into 'new' photo collection(s), and eventually will allow us to begin to reconstruct what might be called the 'visual historiography' of the Strossmayer Gallery.

Strossmayer Gallery of Old Masters; photography

International conference jointly organised by University of Dubrovnik ; Institute of Art History - Centre Cvito Fisković, Split ; Arts Academy of the University of Split ; Croatian State Archives, Zagreb ; Technical University of Berlin and Moscow Architectural Institute - State Academy in cooperation with the ICOMOS International Scientific Committee on 20th Century Heritage, hosted by IUC Dubrovnik.