On the occasion of the 130th anniversary of Alma M. Karlin's birth and the 100th anniversary of her departure on the journey around the world, the project team prepared a temporary exhibition in cooperation with the Celje Regional Museum. The exhibition, called Asia Utterly Bewitched Me and authored by Barbara Trnovec, can be viewed at the Celje Regional Museum (16 October 2019–30 September2020). It contains over 100 East Asian objects and 500 postcards from the Alma Karlin Collection, all of which have been thoroughly researched and analysed within the scope of the project. We also published an outstanding, pictorially rich and extremely valuable catalogue which accompanies the exhibition. It provides the very first comprehensive presentation of any collection of East Asian objects in Slovenia. Divided into several thematic sections, the exhibition catalogue reconstructs the perception of East Asian culture through the eyes of this famous traveller from Celje, presents Alma Karlin's collecting agenda, and analyses individual types of her collectibles in relation to various aspects of East Asian culture (Japanese lacquered objects, Japanese woodblock prints, fans, Chinese and Japanese textiles, miniature objects and East Asian postcards).
B.06 Other
COBISS.SI-ID: 302055424International Symposium From Centre to Periphery: Collecting Chinese Objects in Comparative Perspective was held from 19–22 September 2019 at the Slovene Ethnographic Museum. It was conceived as a response to the challenge of situating the history of the collecting of Chinese and other East Asian objects and of their cultural connotations in the global context. The collections of Central and Eastern European regions and the interconnection of such collections at the periphery with the major collections in larger centres were the focus of the symposium. This could further shed light on the understanding of the orientalist discourses in areas that were not part of the former colonial centres. Two keynote speakers were invited: Dr. Stacey Pierson from the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London and Dr. Hans Bjarne Thomsen from the University of Zürich. The symposium programme included also four workshops on four different topics (about the East Asian objects from the Slovene Ethnographic Museum and the National Museum of Slovenia), led by renowned experts in the field. The entire programme is available at: http://as.ff.uni-lj.si/dogodki/collecting_chinese_objects
B.01 Organiser of a scientific meeting
COBISS.SI-ID: 301628928Paper at the international conference at the University of Sofia in Bulgaria, held on 12 and 13 December 2019, addressed the collecting practices of Chinese objects in the Slovene ethnic territories in the late 19th and early 20th century. It particularly highlights the status and identity of three individuals: Alma M. Karlin, Ivan Jager and Ivan Skušek. Compared to other individuals who travelled to East Asia and whose purchases were usually spontaneous and of a handful of items, their collecting practices reveal a planned and systematic approach. As such, they could be identified as the first collectors of East Asian (Chinese) objects in Slovenia.
B.03 Paper at an international scientific conference
COBISS.SI-ID: 36574557