January 24, 2020 – Museum Night will be held across Croatia on January 31, 2020. A look at the program in Split.
This year, the fifteenth Museum Night will be held, an event that began in 2005 with several Zagreb museums, which over the past few years has become the most significant event in Croatian museums.
Museums have built this event with their programs, an audience that has supported it year after year, the general public, the media and partners. Based on numerous surveys of visitors to Croatian museums and quality records of visits to museums and other heritage institutions, it can be said that more than 5,000,000 visitors have frequented Croatian museums over the past 15 years during the event. One of the most significant achievements of the event is promoting the museums themselves and creating a new audience, as many visitors discover the museums and later became part of the permanent audience.
This year, Museum Night is commemorating two major anniversaries: the 200th anniversary of the Split Archeological Museum, founded in 1820, and the 140th anniversary of the Museum of Arts and Crafts in Zagreb, founded in 1880.
Furthermore, in 2020, it will be 184 years since the founding of the National Museum, the 152nd since the founding of the Strossmayer Gallery of Old Masters, and 142 years since the founding of the Museum of Natural History.
Thus, the theme of Museum Night 2020 will be an opportunity for Croatian museums to once again remind the general public about the importance of ‘museum history, present and future’. Communicating various content to the public – from museum collections, professional, scientific, educational and entertaining content to virtual tours of museum exhibits, historical buildings and protected heritage sites, and digital technologies have opened up unprecedented possibilities for presenting the museums.
These two significant anniversaries – the Split Archaeological Museum and the Museum of Arts and Crafts in Zagreb – provide an incentive for museums to update the following topics, which are worth talking about more broadly and point to numerous programs at Croatian Museums and Heritage Institutions on Museum Night 2020:
– The relevance of the museum in contemporary society and future development
– Museum greats and personalities who are in charge of Croatian culture
– Museums as places for meeting and acquiring new knowledge
– Relationship between museums and local communities
– The influence of museums in creating positive public change
– Museums and cultural and creative industries
– Museums and sustainable development of cultural tourism
– Museum architecture and infrastructure
– New museums, new technologies and new audiences
Museums can also be defined as:
– learning centers
– centers of economic influence
– key partners in travel and tourism
– bearers of cultural renewal – (urban, social and economic regeneration)
– community gathering centers of all social classes
– centers of research, innovation, application of new knowledge and technologies
– centers of motivation for creativity
– Supporters of social change and intercultural understanding
– centers of friendship development and international cooperation
On the 15th Museum Night, let’s confirm that Croatian museums have the knowledge, power, potential and audience that loves them.
In Split, guests can visit:
Brodosplit Museum
Split City Museum
Museum of Croatian Archaeological Monuments
Prokultura – House of Language and Culture Peristyle
School of Fine Arts – Gallery School
Mosor Star Village – Science, Culture, Art
The Croatian Museum Society has organized the Museum Night in Croatia since 2005. The author of the concept and the project manager are Vesna Jurić Bulatović and Dubravka Osrecki Jakelic, who decided to launch it as a city pilot project back in December 2005 with six Zagreb museums. Since 2007, Museum Night has grown into a national event involving more and more museums and cities each year.
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