The end of the year is usually the time to stop for a moment, look back and summarize what was done that year. Therefore, we will briefly look back and remember the year that is behind us.
Spring in the Regional Museum was marked by a very important event for us: the launch of our Museum’s website. The most deserving for starting the site is our fellow citizen Nenad Vukićević and the “Blago” Fund (Palo Alto, California, USA), to whom we owe great gratitude and without whose help the Museum’s site would not even exist. So far, nearly 500 items from the collections of our Museum have been presented on the site, and through 23 published blogs, we have regularly informed our audience about all the activities of our institution.
Summer was the time for exhibition activities. After a long break imposed by the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic, in early September, in cooperation with the Mihajlović–Phoenix Foundation, we opened an exhibition of drawings by renowned Serbian artist, Ljubodrag Janković Jale. After the premiere at the Modern Gallery in Valjevo and the Gallery in Pirot, the Jagodina audience had the opportunity to see the magnificent drawings of this prominent artist after a long time. After the exhibition, the artist gave us a drawing, which significantly enriched the Collection of Drawings and Prints.
Our exhibitions and items from our collections have been hosted in other cities as well. At the exhibition Weapons and the Life of Soldiers in the Middle Ages held at the National Museum in Kragujevac during September and until the middle of October, items from the Medieval Collection of our Museum were also exhibited. On the occasion of the Liberation Day of Vršac in the First World War, the City Museum of Vršac hosted the exhibition “General Dušan Dodić–Hero of the Great War“, premiered in Jagodina in 2018 as a joint project of the Regional Museum of Jagodina and the Museum–National University Trstenik, realized with the support of the Ministry of Culture and information of the Republic of Serbia.
At the beginning of July, one of our most famous comic book authors, Saša Rakezić, better known under the pseudonym Aleksandar Zograf, visited our Museum. This internationally recognized artist has been dealing with various topics in the field of archaeology in recent years. the Regional Museum of Jagodina, with its rich collections of figural art, utensils, weapons, jewelry and cult objects from Neolithic cultures to the arrival of the Romans, was an unavoidable stop on his research journey. We hope that in one of the next sequels of Zograf’s archaeological comic series, we will read about the cult of the Goddess Mother in the Drenovac metropolis, the ritual burial of luxury ceramics from Panjevački rit or the prince’s tombs near Ćuprija.
We had a lot of work during the fall, thanks to the support of the Ministry of Culture and Information of the Republic of Serbia. In October this year, geostatic research of the foundation zones of the Regional Museum building was performed. At that time, four probes were opened along the outer walls of the Museum building and one probe each in the hall with a permanent exhibition and in the space of the ethnological depot. Thus, data were collected on the basis of which complex analyzes of soil composition for geostatic and geomechanical studies were performed in laboratory conditions as a basis for performing the next phases of the project of rehabilitation, renovation and adaptation of the museum building.
The Ministry of Culture and Information has been supporting the publishing activities of our Museum for several years now. This year we are richer for two new editions. Our homeland, a publication about the past of Jagodina and its cultural and historical heritage, has already found its way to readers, and we will soon promote the Guide through the Regional Museum of Jagodina in which we will present 178 most representative items from Museum collections.
Winter is the time to prepare plans and new projects, and our wish is that next year will be even more successful and filled with various activities. The Regional Museum would like to thank all the friends and associates who contributed and supported our work during this year.
Finally, we wish you a Happy New Year and the upcoming holidays, and we invite you to continue to follow our work.
