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The Policy of the Ethnographic Museum regarding the Collec-tion of Materials in the past ten Years

Nadja Maglica, Zagreb/ Kroatien

A certain amount of material has been collected in the Ethno-graphic Museum in the past ten years owing to the diligence of itsexperts. It was partly collected by purchasing it with the availablemoney, partly being donated, and also bought with the money allot-ted for the needs of special exhibitions. Due to extremely hard cir-cumstances in the wartime, the conditions of collecting were madesignificantly harder. On the one hand for lack of money, on the otherbecause of humane reasons, a considerable part of the material fromthese years has not been saved. Based on the experience so far, somedefinite ideas on how to enhance collecting, accumulating and com-pleting the museum holdings have suggested it, and they offer somespecific suggestions as the ultimate target.

The purpose of this review is to point to the facts that havesignificantly affected the collecting of the material for the Ethno-graphic Museum collections in the past ten- year period( 1992-2002).

The importance of this labour needs neither special descrip-tion nor emphasis as this is actually the museum's basic field of ac-tivity and it has been performed, with more or less success, eversince the foundation of the museum. In the mentioned period, ledfirst of all by the attempts of completing the existing empty gaps inindividual collections, 4.590 objects all have been gathered bypurchase and by being donated. In this way certain collections of themuseum have had their gaps filled significantly, which made furtherexpert treatment, assessment and an integral presentation for thepublic possible. The photograph collection and the illustrative mate-rial of the museum both have been extended by additional 647 items( negatives, slides, picture postcards, photographs, water colours andgraphics). This would not have been possible to achieve without thefinancial support of the competent authorities, the City Office forCulture in Zagreb and the financial support from the Ministry of