{"id":1328,"date":"2022-03-11T14:46:07","date_gmt":"2022-03-11T14:46:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/europeanmemories.net\/magazine\/?p=1328"},"modified":"2022-03-15T11:17:46","modified_gmt":"2022-03-15T11:17:46","slug":"the-history-museum-of-bosnia-and-herzegovina-in-sarajevo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/europeanmemories.net\/magazine\/the-history-museum-of-bosnia-and-herzegovina-in-sarajevo\/","title":{"rendered":"The History Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina in Sarajevo"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Elma Ha\u0161imbegovi\u0107<\/mark><\/a><\/strong>
Museum director, historian and museum professional<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I have been asked to provide a text for the sightseeing category of the EUROM magazine. I was thinking hard about how to present the History Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina<\/a> <\/mark>in Sarajevo to pique readers\u2019 interest and to make them think of the museum as a unique institution. It is neither the museum featuring the most important collections, nor the museum hosting the most appealing exhibitions, nor the oldest one in the country. It does not have a Mona Lisa<\/em> or a Haggadah<\/em>; it does not even have a star piece. But it is a special place nonetheless. I have decided to take you on the tour as I would with our VIP visitors when they come to the museum (note that we consider every single visitor a VIP). A spot of history, a spot of present-day context, who we are and what we are doing\u2026\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The History Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina building, architecture of the 20th century, recognized and awarded by the Keep it Modern program of the Getty Foundation – still waiting for the recognition and reconstruction by the local authorities<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Do not be fooled by the broken stairs at the entrance and shabby exterior, to paraphrase an anonymous Tripadvisor visitor, this is a place with a great deal to offer, many stories to tell, many questions to answer and a lot to learn. You just need to give it a chance and come in. Welcoming the visitors in the spacious lobby are objects and artworks tied to the history of the Second World War: stained glass with revolutionary messages, a glimpse from the windows of weapons on display in the atrium, armed people in the bronze artwork\u2026 Is it a military museum? No, it is not, but these objects reveal something of its history. Established in the aftermath of World War II, in November 1945, as the Museum of National Liberation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, it sought to \u201cpreserve the memory of the war and a just battle of all peoples of Bosnia and Herzegovina and Yugoslavia against fascism\u201d. This was the state narrative in the newly created socialist state. The centre of the stained glass reads \u201cSmrt fa\u0161izmu, Sloboda narodu\u201d <\/em>(\u201cDeath to fascism, freedom to the people\u201d), a work by the prominent Yugoslav artist and partisan Vojo Dimitrijevi\u0107. At one point the name was changed to the Museum of the Revolution of Bosnia and Herzegovina, a name to preserve the memory of the place, and at approximately the same time (1963, opening to the public in 1966) received the purpose-built venue. This period can be considered the museum\u2019s golden age. Situated in the city\u2019s outskirts, the museum is a modernist building strongly influenced by Mies van der Rohe\u2019s architecture, built from stone, metal and glass, with a floating cuboid at its centre. It was a precursor and harbinger of the Marijin Dvor neighbourhood\u2019s transformation into an area of modernist, experimental architecture (Parliament Building, UNIS skyscrapers and Holiday Inn Hotel). The architects Maga\u0161, \u0160midihen and Horvat signed the building design. For fifty years, the museum collected war artefacts, archives and photographic material, and valuable artworks from the period. It grew a significant collection and, at the same time, served as an institution to educate the public about the values and ideology of socialist Yugoslavia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But then came the fall of communism, the breakup of the state, war and destruction. The museum lost its purpose, as the revolution was over. What\u2019s more, the building happened to be at the first front line, two hundred meters from the siege line. This can be seen in Dimitrijevi\u0107\u2019s stained glass. The building is riddled with bullets and shrapnel as a result of the siege, adding to the story of the place. Many more stories about the museum building during the war are still waiting to be told and discovered. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nevertheless, the most challenging period for the museum was yet to come. It arrived following the siege, in the so-called post-war or transitional period, which is still, 25 years on after the end of the war, the one we live in. The History Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina, as a national state institution with no State Ministry of Culture, is not legally recognised and is consequently not funded by the State. It shares its fate with six other cultural institutions of national importance and significance \u2013 including the National Museum, the National Gallery and the National Library of Bosnia and Herzegovina, to name but a few \u2013, which have had no legal status or official founder since 1995. Abandoned by the government, they have all been left alone to struggle for basic survival, putting their collections and buildings in jeopardy. In other words, endangering the country\u2019s national cultural heritage. In the political climate of post-war Bosnia and Herzegovina, in which citizens are ethnically divided and there is no real political will to support anything that fosters shared heritage and history, this is not an exception. It simply follows the pattern of deepening divisions and destroys the idea of Bosnian society as a multi-ethnic one. The most radical consequence of such politics towards national cultural institutions is the closure of the National Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina for more than two years. This situation and political context explain the broken stairs, the shabby exterior and the cold interior in the winter months. But how has the History Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina responded to the never-ending crisis?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The History Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina has undergone a tremendous transformation, from playing a passive role, blaming politics for the state of the institution, to a proactive grassroots strategy to restore the institution\u2019s dignity. This strategy is reflected in opening up more towards the local community, networking, cooperation, and exploring different ways of handling history, heritage and culture. It has changed nobody\u2019s museum into everybody\u2019s museum, that is, a museum open to all. This strategy turned the museum into a dynamic, proactive institution with a remarkable number of national and international initiatives, a cultural hotspot, and a place for constructive dialogue about the past, present and future. Dealing with the war past of Bosnia and Herzegovina is one of the most thorny issues in our ethnically divided society, in which narratives of the war are cemented and serve as one of the focal points for nation-building processes and further divisions. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a>
Wake up, Europe!<\/em><\/strong> Support and solidarity mobilisations for Bosnia and Herzegovina
and its Citizens during the 1992-1995 war<\/mark><\/a>, the latest museum project based on a vast
research and documentation collected from the private, organizational and public
archives all around Europe<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Left<\/strong>: Besieged Sarajevo, permanent exhibition since 2003, serving as a platform for the constructive dialogue and dealing with the past activities.
Hand-made stoves illustrate creativity of the citizens during the siege.
Right<\/strong>: The Museum of Revolution, permanent exhibition until 1992, detail showing the Nandor Glid\u2019s artwork\/installation. The same author designed the International Monument at the Dachau concentration camp memorial site.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Here, in our guided tour, we have already come to the point of introducing our permanent exhibition and shall proceed to the first floor of the museum, which plays host to the exhibition on the siege. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina, is one of the cities in Bosnia and Herzegovina that most suffered during the breakup of Yugoslavia in the 1990s. It endured a siege of almost four years. It was the longest in modern history, and bore a lasting impact on its citizens, human casualties included, and on the city\u2019s architecture. In 2002, just seven years after the war\u2019s end, the History Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina decided to address this topic by collecting artefacts, documents, photographs and stories from 1992-1995. The results were presented in 2003 when the exhibition was officially inaugurated. The exhibition mainly aims to shine the spotlight on the day-to-day life of citizens during the siege, their endeavours to meet their needs for food, electricity, news, education, and culture. In essence, everything they had been deprived of and what they sought to keep a sense of normality in times of death and destruction. The exhibition features photographs, documents and newspapers from the first anti-war demonstrations in April 1992 and the first barricades to the Dayton Peace Agreement, signed in November 1995. It covers the most significant events of the siege, but also reveals the stories of ordinary people through the objects they donated to the museum. Handmade stoves and a whole host of improvised devices for cooking, heating, etc., made of different recycled materials, are testament to the creativity and resilience of Sarajevo\u2019s citizens: every object on display tells a story of survival, sharing and solidarity. The culture section is given a significant place at the exhibition too: posters of plays, concerts, exhibitions and other cultural events organised during the siege are proof of the need for arts and culture even in the most difficult times of human hardship. The whole concept of the exhibition as not serving national narratives and feeding nationalisms allows it to be a platform for constructive dialogue, both locally and internationally. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Left<\/strong>: Exhibition Between Fascism and Antifascism: in 11 acts. Museum collections are the main museum resources, serving
to deal with WW2 and its legacy. Right<\/strong>: A cooperation within the EU projects brings new partnerships and exhibitions. The Observing Walls<\/mark><\/a> <\/mark>project gathered partners from Ljubljana, Berlin and Sarajevo in 2019.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Parallel to the permanent process of collecting new objects and stories, the museum strives to pursue different initiatives with young people, artists and international partners. History, memory, dealing with the past, resilience, peace, reconciliation, and human rights are key themes in this endeavour. In doing so, we strongly believe that we are representing a voice that differs from mainstream politics, which keep the country and society in a constant state of tension and under the \u201cpost-war\u201d label, even twenty-five years after the conflict. What\u2019s more, we are convinced that the stories and lessons from besieged Sarajevo extend far beyond local history and are relevant for the Europe of today. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is still much more to tell you: what is hidden in the museum storerooms, how we address WW2 topics, what we are doing with the legacy of the Museum of the Revolution, and so on, but time is up, and we have far exceeded the space assigned to us\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Elma Ha\u0161imbegovi\u0107, director of the History Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina, take the readers on a VIP tour to this unique institution <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":1332,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[343,360,101],"class_list":["post-1328","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-memorial-spaces-and-places","tag-balcan-wars","tag-sarajevo","tag-second-world-war"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/europeanmemories.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1328","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/europeanmemories.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/europeanmemories.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/europeanmemories.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/europeanmemories.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1328"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/europeanmemories.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1328\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1372,"href":"https:\/\/europeanmemories.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1328\/revisions\/1372"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/europeanmemories.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1332"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/europeanmemories.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1328"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/europeanmemories.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1328"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/europeanmemories.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1328"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}