Exhibition "Imagining the Balkans" Opens at National Museum
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The member museums are all national institutions, which have been created and are functioning as promoters of exclusive national identities and ideologies, usually posed one against the other and originally not created for working together, said coordinator of the exhibition Philippos Mazarakis-Ainian.
The exhibition focuses on the region's material and cultural heritage spanning from the beginning of the French Revolution in 1789 to the beginning of WWI, Slovenian curator Jože Podpečnik told the STA.
"The exhibition groups these periods in ten chapters, and every country contributed one exhibit to each chapter," Podpečnik explained.
The thematic chapters include: Living in the old world; Travelling, communicating; A new social order: the rise of the middle classes; Creating and diffusing knowledge; Mapping; Using history, making heroes; Public celebrations; and Image of the Nation. The chapters are rounded off by a thematic introduction on coffee culture and concluded around the film "Whose is this Song?"
The exhibition will be open at 6 PM as part of a two-day meeting of the Council of Ministers of Culture of South-East Europe (CoMoCoSEE), which will get underway on Tuesday in Brdo pri Kranju to mark the end of Slovenia's one-year presidency of the council.
The event will be attended by UNESCO Director General Irina Bokova and European Education Commissioner Androulla Vassiliou.