75 Years of Museums on Hvar
Gallery Juraj Plančić
May 29th – June 15th 2025
Opening: Thursday, May 29th at 8:00pm
Island as a Museum. This was the vision of Dr. Niko Duboković Nadalini when he was appointed as an Honorary Conservator for the island of Hvar 75 years ago – a vision that the island’s three museums continue to strive towards today.
The idea of establishing a museum on the island of Hvar, rich in natural and cultural heritage first emerged at the end of the 19th century. Dr. Niko Duboković Nadalini laid the foundations for the continuous care of Hvar’s cultural heritage through the institution of the Historical Archive of the Hvar Commune, and later the Centre for the Protection of the Cultural Heritage of the Island of Hvar. Through these institutions, he established museum exhibits in Hvar, Stari Grad, Vrboska, and Pitve. The institution cared for cultural and natural assets through a network of commissioners in each settlement (town) on the island. With the division of the once-unified municipality into four administrative units in the early 1990s, certain collections and exhibits separated from the Centre. The Centre was restructured into the Hvar Heritage Museum in Hvar. In Stari Grad, the Stari Grad Culture Centre was founded, which later became the Stari Grad Museum, while in Jelsa, the Jelsa Municipal Museum was established.
The exhibition “Museums on Hvar – 75 Years of Systematic Care for Heritage” unites the island’s three museums. Representative objects from the museums’ rich collections are shown – items collected, processed, presented, and carefully preserved throughout the history of these institutions. Accompanying the objects is a timeline tracing the development of public museum activity on the island.
The aim of the exhibition is to present and bring closer to the public the work of our institutions, which – despite the changes and transformations they have undergone over the past 75 year –continue to uphold the mission begun by Dr. Niko Duboković Nadalini.