National Museums of Slovenia: joined exhibition project

International Museum Day 2018
HYPERCONNECTED MUSEUMS:
NEW APPROACHES, NEW PUBLICS

Opening on 18 May 2018, Museum Quarter Metelkova, Ljubljana. 

Under the auspice of ICOM Slovenia state-owned museums celebrate International Museum Day with a group exhibition at the exhibition plateau at Metelkova. The main focus of this year’s exhibition – an event that has now become a tradition, is HYPERCONNECTED MUSEUMS: New approaches, new publics.

Nowadays it is impossible to imagine and understand the role of museums without taking into account different connections they make: they are an essential part of their local communities, cultural landscape, and their natural environment. Thanks to technology, museums can now extend their role to address not only their core audience, but connect to new publics by adapting the ways in which they present their collections.

However, not all connections are due to technology. As museums strive to maintain their relevance in society, the focus is shifting towards the local communities and addressing different groups that from the society. As a result, countless common projects organized by museums in collaboration with minorities, indigenous peoples, local institutions, and vulnerable social groups have emerged in the past years. To engage new publics and strengthen connections with them, museums must find new ways of interpreting and presenting their collections. Cooperation facilitated by the International Museum Day and interinstitutional projects are just a few of such examples of museums heading towards their roles as spaces of intergenerational and multicultural integration.

The exhibition emphasises the significance and power of cooperation, uncovering the cultural treasures kept by museums, bringing to life the museum quarter, helping to shape the public cultural space and it emphasizes the role of museums as agents of changes in society and promoters of multicultural dialogue.

We invite you to visit us and become the co-creators of the stories of Slovenian museums.
Kaja Širok, PhD, president of ICOM Slovenia

Exhibition coordination: National Museum of Contemporary History (Kaja Širok, Urška Purg); Exhibition design: Janja Gomezel, DICASTUDIO;
Photos for the exhibition were contributed by: Military Museum of Slovenian Armed Forces, MG+MSUM (Museum of Modern Art and Museum of Contemporary Art Metelkova), Museum of Architecture and Design, National Gallery of Slovenia, National Museum of Contemporary History, National Museum of Slovenia, Slovene Cinematheque, Slovene Ethnographic Museum, Slovene Museum of Christianity, Slovenian Museum of Natural History, Slovenian School Museum, Slovenian Theatre Institute – Theatre museum and Technical Museum of Slovenia;
Print: RPS, Ljubljana, May 2018