Professional scientific conference with international participation, Zagreb, Mimara Museum, 14th – 15th June 2011
Professional scientific conference held at the Mimara Museum on 14th and 15th June 2011 was organized as a result of conclusions reached by participants and expert groups at three previous conferences, organized with the support of the Foundation of the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts.
The primary aim for organizing a conference of this theme was to draw attention to the importance of preventive conservation of textiles, research work, appropriate ways to store, protect and exhibit textile artworks and encourage cooperation among experts from various fields. Another incentive was the successful example of the “Textiles Archive”, a historic textile storing facility which is part of the Croatian Conservation Institute.
The conference covered several topics: emphasizing obligations on the part of actors in the protection of historic textiles and presenting programs for documenting historic textiles – the databases and the documentation accompanying conservation-restoration work on textile artefacts. Special emphasis was put on the importance of accurate and continual documentation which should accompany all conservation work on textile artefacts (lists of artefacts, records of entry and exit of artworks, various techniques of photographing an artwork etc.). Another topic of this years’ conference was to demonstrate how documentation was done on specific examples.
The side-programme included an expert visit to two important collections of historic textiles – the Museum of Serbian Orthodox Church in Zagreb and the Jewish Community Zagreb and a visit to the “Art Déco” exhibition at the Museum of Arts and Crafts.
The two-day conference drew about 80 participants including representatives from the Ministry of Culture and conservators from its conservation departments, curators and heads of various museum collections, students and teaching staff from the Department of Art and Restoration, University of Dubrovnik, Faculty of Textile Technology in Zagreb along with the teaching staff from Faculties of Humanities and Social Sciences in Zagreb, Zadar and Rijeka, researchers from Ruđer Bošković Institute and numerous other conservators-restorers and preparators.