This paper will for the first time systematically introduce the collecting history of East Asian objects in Slovenia, stored at different Slovenian museums and other academic institutions. They were brought or sent to Slovenia by sailors, missionaries, diplomats, scientific associates and travellers, who travelled to East Asia in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The paper will therefore focus on the nature of collecting in the Slovene area at the turn of the 20th century within the framework of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy and the first years after its dissolution. It will particularly highlight the status and identity of individuals who were “collectors”, and the nature and extent of the items they collected. In the last part, it will further discuss the collections of Alma M. Karlin, Ivan Jager and Ivan Skušek from the beginning of the 20th century who could be placed in the category of collectors, particularly the sailor Ivan Skušek, due to the specific nature of their collecting. Through the investigation of the East Asian collections the paper will highlight the specific position of the Slovene territory in the history of Euro-Asian cultural connections, and thus try to reconstruct intercultural contacts between Slovenia and East Asia. It will for the first time focus entirely on the specifics of the Slovenian cultural and socio-political environment, opening up new research opportunities in the so far neglected treatment of the perception of former European imperial peripheries to the East Asian heritage, which will further lay foundations for the re-evaluation of the colonial categories of collecting practices.
COBISS.SI-ID: 36504669
The following article discusses the music-religion related objects that Alma M. Karlin (1889–1950) brought back to Europe from Japan, where she stayed from the beginning of June 1922 to July 1923. Not numerous, but in comparison to similar objects brought from other countries, the largest in number, the collection shows Karlin’s preference for simple instrument miniatures such as models or miniatures of the instruments shamisen, koto, yakumo-koto. Also interesting and indirectly related to Japanese music are objects such as ukiyo-e postcards and small coloured prints on postcards, depicting themes related to Japanese traditional instruments, small bronze tengu mask and others. In order to better define those instruments and find a possible relation of these instruments and their religious practices to Karlin’s life, the article also focuses on the Karlin’s non-classical travelogue, Slovenian translations of Einsame Weltreise: Die Tragodie einer Frau (Lonely Travel, 1929), in particular where she depicts her travel and stay in Japan. From her collection of instruments and her writings, the author searches how and to what extent Karlin developed a sense of, or was devoted to certain instruments which express some relation to Shinto or Buddhist religious practices.
COBISS.SI-ID: 36558173
The paper deals with missionary exhibitions in Slovenia in the first half of the 20th century. It contextualizes them within a wider framework and historical development of such exhibition practices. It puts a special focus on the collections of curiosities and early missionary museums, while also analysing the intertwined missionary and ethnographical approaches. It also analyses the relation between permanent missionary museums and temporary exhibitions. It explores the initiatives that contributed to the organisation of the exhibitions and the phenomena that developed from the exhibition practices. It provides a detailed analysis of the displays that were part of the Ljubljana Fair, both travelling exhibitions and one-time missionary exhibitions.
COBISS.SI-ID: 15044611