Živa award

This site of great cultural and natural importance is a unique, geographically and historically incomparable landmark in the country – a site of great heritage value and natural beauty, with historic structures, mountains, a lake and an island, bearing witness to its past and present. One of the most outstanding monuments in the area, considered as national heritage and a symbol of identity, which has been widely appreciated, recognised and promoted, is the ancient castle with its preserved walls, chapel and other historical footprints. It stands majestically on a cliff high above the lake, offering a magnificent view of the surrounding mountains, the resort and the lake. Over the years, the castle has been restored and renewed, preserving its impressive appearance. Nowadays, in addition to an important historical museum exhibition, it hosts events and offers all kinds of facilities for large numbers of school groups and people from all over the world. The sustainable care of the castle is in the hands of various state and municipal institutions, whose coordinated activities are based on responsible heritage management. This also provides for some improvements to the site and the further development of sustainable cultural tourism. This site offers a unique opportunity to experience a convergence of cultural and natural heritage, which also has been celebrated in national poetry and by numerous writers, as well as being depicted in film and painting.

The Museum has recently done amazing work in repositioning itself within the region as a complex institution, recording the rich history and heritage through diverse valuable collections of the area by transmitting it to the wider community and beyond, paying special attention to the youth, people with special needs and to education.
The museum affirms the cultural treasure of the region under the slogan ‘Present your history to protect it.’ By promoting and communicating it through the new permanent exhibition and a host of events, it visibly contributes to the overall sustainable development of the area as well as encouraging people’s awareness of belonging to the city. It is thus seen as a guardian, a protector and an interpreter of cultural heritage, but even more as an indispensable actor in contemporary social movements – in every sense – in the south of the country.

The Centre takes care of a hundred-year-old oak forest and the sea as a source of life, and of the cultural diversity reflected in local customs. With a holistic, sustainable and inter-sectoral participatory approach, which is represented in documentation, research, presentation and promotion, it works to preserve the natural and cultural maritime heritage of an island in the north of the Adriatic as a precious source of biological and cultural diversity. The Centre successfully creates a deeper relationship between the local population and visitors, enhancing multi-faced experiences through integrating cultural and natural heritage and the history of the traditional timber trade and shipbuilding. It also develops active sustainable tourism in order to create a balance between the economic, social and ecological needs of the local community. This is an inspiring site spinning together culture and nature along with tradition of the island.

Finding the way to make a museum the best is not easy – or perhaps it is. This city museum found the answer to the challenge in a combination of determination,
knowledge, ideas, and above all the opportunity and the will to create something different and special.
The institution has managed to combine all these principles into an excellent concept to complement and highlight its social role in protection and promotion of the
local cultural heritage by emphasising universal natural and cultural values, thus becoming an exceptional one.
Regional and city museums are often faced with the question of how to present the history of the territory, the peoples living within its borders from ancient times to
the present day, and how to reveal their testimonies, which unite and identify them in sharing pride in and the memory of the past.
This museum has discovered its theme, its object, its material, closely connected with the history of the region and with all mankind, with life on Earth and at the
present time with the joint human responsibility against its exploitation. The material in question is wood. This represents the essence of the content the museum has
created and transferred in an up-to-date way into a comprehensive story and a uniquely engaging exhibition project – a great attraction to the large number of visitors to both the physical museum and the virtual one.

The gallery, a new urban cultural centre of great importance for culturally and socially sustainable practices linked through art, was opened in 2021 in a former factory building, showing the relevance of revitalisation of the urban potential of the city’s physical heritage and its environment.
This is reflected in the outstanding features of the transformation of the historic building in terms of both form and content that demonstrate a high degree of integrity associated with the preservation of industrial heritage, aiming at ensuring its continuity by safeguarding it for new public use, while generating urban cultural dynamism and identity.
The gallery (functioning as part of the city’s Museum and Galleries), within the completely reconstructed and renewed interior spaces of the old factory’s massive edifice, of which the outside walls were restored and its original look preserved, resonates with the physical, symbolic and unprecedented social narrative of this heritage site.
It displays a distinctive adjustment to modernity by activating the old to create the new – a contemporary cultural urban space, open to the public, offering a variety of art projects and forms of cooperation in the wider national and international context. In just over a year, the gallery has fulfilled its role in presenting and producing various exhibitions, educational activities, artistic interdisciplinary interpretations, discussions and other genuine events reflecting current social questions – many of them pointing to the public and heritage value of the site.

The museum, established in 2019 upon a family initiative and with the support of the local community, is an exemplary private museum of local and regional importance.
It presents and contributes to the safeguarding and valorisation of the woodcarving tradition and craftsmen’s skills, a priceless intangible element of local cultural heritage.
It is an engaged custodian of woodcarving skills, and their handing down to succeeding generations. Its development is focused on sustainable principles, strengthening
environmental, social, economic and cultural responsibilities. It successfully fosters the community’s economic and social development, and boosts local cultural tourism.

The entire site is a living, open-air museum distinguished by the characteristic Balkan architectural structures of buildings that appeared in the country during
the Revival period (18th c. – 19th c.). It is a unique regional museum, situated at the crossroads of the country between North and South, covering a large area, at the
edge of a National Park, not far from the city.
Since its establishment in the late 1960s, it has rescued, reconstructed and taken a holistic approach to the conservation and promotion of the Balkan architectural
and traditional ethnographic heritage. In the preservation, communication and promotion of the national and regional traditional culture, and in development of
cultural tourism and creative industries, the museum has been particularly successful in realizing the concept of a modern, socially, economically and
environmentally sustainable open-air museum.
It is therefore an institution that deserves recognition for generating wide respect for heritage and its values and assets created by man and nature, through taking
into account contemporary times.

Throughout hundred years since the Museum’s inception and since the creation of its first historical collections, the Museum has faced many challenges. Nevertheless, its transformative power, clear institutional purpose, the professional and scholar discourse from the perspective of different disciplines on the protection of diverse collections and their acquisition, have shaped this institution into an important contemporary Museum that educates and informs the public on the history and political heritage of the country and its nations. Today, the Museum, which acts as a link between the past and the present, is becoming increasingly significant territorially, nationally and internationally in the context of the dialogue on the meaning of history and memory for generations to come.

The entire site is a huge, major war memorial distinguished by architectural constructions, a powerful ensemble of fortifications and stunning concrete statues, commemorating thousands of lost lives and men’s bravery in fighting against wartime aggression and horrors, while defending their liberty, homeland, nation and national identity. The heroic deeds of World War 2 transformed this site into a unique monumental complex of the country’s strength and pride – a ‘sacred land of memory’. Its conservation is advocated holistically, retaining its cultural significance as a reliable witness to the past, fostering its safeguarding and supporting its sustainable use as the responsibility of current generations, and the privilege and right of future generations.

Housed in the renovated historical building of the Marine Station by the sea at the heart of the port, where some of the largest ocean liners are moored today, the new museum projects a vivid image of the time when passenger ships carried over the ocean hundreds of thousands of people leaving their homeland in search of a better life.
This creates a powerful first impression of the museum and introduces its multifaceted account of countless human fates, stories and unprecedented experiences. The museum delivers a narration in a comprehensive manner about the country’s emigrants, dispersed all over the world, shaping the public’s understanding of its national past and defining the nation’s cultural identity and consciousness.

The Museum is one of the largest open air museums in the North of the Federal State. It is situated on an island of a vast lake of rare biodiversity and natural beauty and represents a unique heritage site with an impressive group of timber architectural monuments, of historical wooden village houses and ethnographic collections that have survived for centuries. It is a place of signification that inspires and attracts innumerable audiences from all over the world. The Museum greatly contributes to the conservation and restoration of wooden vernacular heritage on the island and to the study and presentation of their tangible and intangible assets as powerful cultural expressions of human creation of historic importance. Its multi-layered array of functions on the island, combined with those in the city, and its inventive activities have led to a wealth of interpretations and have promoted research, learning, better knowledge of, and reflection on traditions. The Museum is also a major source of employment, revenue and sustainable development as it invests extensively in various educational, outreach and socially relevant projects engaging the local community. It has an active Children’s museum and strong links with schools. The institution has thus become one of the country’s leading centres and an international reference for restoration of wooden monuments, and for education and training in this field, as well as an example of best practice in the management of a World Cultural Heritage Site, and of comprehensive cultural heritage valorisation.

A captivating museum scenario, the closeness of the unspoilt beauty of natural Alpine wonders, and the museum organization is impressive. So is the well-conceived permanent exhibition that develops in eleven thematic units different exciting stories by combining authentic objects with highly interactive and playful content.

Every part of the exhibition is designed in a contemporary museological way to involve, engage, and influence various target groups through awakening the virtual experience of a climb up the mountains, an interest in mountains, mountaineering joys and dangers, tradition and much more. The exciting permanent exhibition carrying the message “each path is a story of its own” is enhanced by an innovative architectural design suggesting mountain slopes and the shelters of Alpinists.

Successful collaboration with tourist organizations and various domestic and foreign associations of mountaineers has brought trans-frontier popularity to the museum that houses an information centre and is a starting point for climbers and hikers, as well as other sports and cultural activities. The museum encapsulates and explores in a vivid and original way almost all facets of the Alpine spirit and life – a subject with a universal dimension – while being inextricably linked to the affirmation and promotion of Alpine identity. The museum is dedicated to and cultivates sustainable respect for the cultural and natural uniqueness of the Alpine world and life.

The Jury unanimously agreed that the museum meets all the standards for the Živa Award, protecting and valorizing tangible and intangible, natural and cultural heritage as a whole.

The jury unanimously recognized the special spirit and excellence of an interdisciplinary institution, of a new contemporary art and documentation centre with intriguing architecture where an archive, objects, theatre, art and contemporary culture are blended in an effective way.
The main purpose of the institution is to preserve and share ideas “not in a Library system, but in the minds and imaginations of generations to come.”
The institution is a socially engaged and responsible museum for today and tomorrow that contributes to the protection of cultural heritage at the international level. The museum is a symbol of the artistic search for an individual path to creativity, crossing the dividing Line between the actor and the audience, between the creator and the recipient; it engages everyone in an activity game – a collective play. The museum space constitutes both the stage and the audience; it is a venue for constant performances. Its value Lies in erasing the borders between inside and outside. The creator, the artist, residents and visitors all take an active part in the process of creating space, which can be shaped and expressed in a museological way through selected objects, structures, means and methods.

The museum contributes to the sustainable environmental development, tradition and the name of the extraordinary man by spinning together movable, unmovable, tangible and intangible heritage; nature, man and culture into a huge cultural landscape and a complex visitor experience. The institution is a socially engaged and responsible museum that contributes to protection of cultural and natural heritage in the regional, national and international level.

The general atmosphere is excellent. They rely on team work and their mutual creative energy. Multimedia is on a high level. Publications and promotion materials meet high standards. The museum contributes to the development of museological ideas in a best possible way by respecting professional standards a being a source of fresh ideas and innovative concepts. The director has a strategy to assemble the team and to open the doors to the audiences, especially to the young generation. This has been an act of courage, that pays off nowadays. Services offered to the public are on an international level. This is still again very unique in Serbia. The Matica Srpska is the example which proves that the director and the team can be recognized at the entrance of the museum.