Exhibition concept: Maja Arčabić, Vesna Leiner
Workshops manager: Vesna Leiner
Exhibition design: Bilić_Müller Design Studio
Since 1977, ICOM (the International Council of Museums) has marked May 18 every year as International Museum Day. In the last few years, 30,000 museums from more than a hundred countries have taken part in this action. Marking the day with various campaigns, exhibitions, lectures and workshops and the like, our wish is to remind the public of the significant role of museums in society, particularly in the preservation of the heritage. Museums are a place where the heritage that has come down to us from our forebears is collected, studied and kept and, via exhibitions and various museum activities, is presented to the public.
This year’s event unfolds under the motto Museums and Memories. The wish behind this topic is to draw attention to the importance of memory in the development of civilisation. Every object we use contains a mass of information, sometimes unrecognisable to us: information about who made it, and when; what it is for, where and how it was acquired, the name of the owner and so on. It is, then, essential to collect items that help us in supplementing the image of past times and events that in various ways have affected the life and development of both individual and the whole community. Museum objects are a reflection of the level of technology, the worldviews and lifestyle of their times.
Memory plays a multiple role in the life of man, defining our actions in the present, and providing a link from individual to family to community.
With this exhibition and interactive workshops entitled With hat on head, Zagreb City Museum this year too is taking part in the ICOM celebration of International Museum Day. Another activity in common is the 16th museum and educational prize game Touch of the Croatian Museum Association’s museum education and cultural activity section.
Why hat? It’s just a head covering, protecting us from the rain and sun and wind. But hats, like other objects that we use everyday, contain various kinds of hidden information.
Hats are an indispensable reflection of the fashion and style of attire of a particular time, and their owners took part in the development and shaping of society as it then was. Not only fashion details, head coverings also had a functional role. Chef’s hats, protective helmets and crowns can be part of a uniform of some kind, as well as symbols allowing us to identify the occupations or statuses of some persons.
The hats and caps shown sketch out various historical periods and also once belonged to known and unknown Zagreb men and women. They took part in the life of our city and in some way or other shaped its political, cultural and economic history.
As well as museum objects, copies of head coverings are on show. You can touch them and try them on. For a moment you can become Sidonia Rubido, a famed woman of the Illyrian period, another ‘Illyrian’, Ljudevit Gaj, then Elizabeth, aka Sissy, consort of King and Emperor Franz Joseph I, the painter Slava Raškaj, a member of the city watch from the end of the 19th century, a cook and others. Touch takes you back to the time when the owners of these items were alive. We also invite you to donate your own caps and hats and toques to Zagreb City Museum... We’re interested in who wore them, when and how they were acquired. Do you have any interesting story about such an object?
The exhibition and the creative workshops With hat on head are meant for all age groups, employed and unemployed, retirees, schoolchildren and students, women and men. Through them we can ‘get to know’ the owners of the hats, their roles and activities in our city.
Vesna Leiner
Pictures from the exhibition
photo Miljenko Gregl and Maja Arčabić, ZCM
