Final farewell to Mladen Vajdić
On Wednesday, 22 February 2023, Mr. Mladen Vajdić, retired senior preparator of the Zoological Department of the Croatian Natural History Museum, passed away at the age of 77.
During his work at the Museum, Mr. Vajdić created the largest number of new museum exhibition specimens, including some of the most demanding ones. Most of them will become part of the Museum’s new permanent exhibition after reconstruction.
In addition to his exceptional knowledge of preparation techniques, Mladen had the eye of a naturalist and the hand of an artist. That is why the specimens he prepared look like living animals captured in a single moment. The tiger, wolves, beaver, bear and caracal are only some of the specimens he created.
Mladen was also an irreplaceable member of the teams that installed numerous natural history exhibitions. He was the author or co-author of most of the dioramas, in which he faithfully depicted forests, wetlands, the sea, birds’ nests and more.
Among the dozens of exhibitions in which he participated, one of the most significant was perhaps the World EXPO exhibition in Lisbon in 1998, where the Republic of Croatia presented itself to the world for the first time after independence. For that exhibition, he spent weeks preparing a specimen of the Dubrovnik knapweed, an endemic plant of southern Croatia.
In addition to his work as a preparator, Mladen participated in almost all of our field research and in the collection of natural history material, which is why he was a co-author of 11 scientific papers.
Mladen also made an exceptional contribution to field and laboratory work during the preparation of doctoral dissertations by younger colleagues. Butterflies were his special passion. He collected them during fieldwork, but also in his free time, and upon his retirement he donated a collection of prepared butterflies to the Croatian Natural History Museum.
Mladen also had enormous practical knowledge of nature and natural history. He helped his colleagues whenever a problem needed to be solved in the Museum. Younger colleagues and curators enjoyed working with him because he always shared the knowledge he had gained through experience and practical work. Senior colleagues valued him as an excellent preparator and field collaborator.
For us in the Museum collective, and especially in the Zoological Department, Mladen was not only a colleague but also a dear friend. We fondly remember our time together during long night hours while setting up exhibitions and finishing them just before opening, fieldwork and adventures that can only happen in places farthest from civilization, and our gatherings and lunches in his preparation laboratory.
We are proud of Mladen’s work and the lasting contribution he left in the Museum. We will miss him. We are sorry that he will not be here when we open our new permanent exhibition. His hand will be missed in it.
However, Mladen’s mark will accompany us, and you, in every corner of our Museum: from the eye of the fox and the eye of the tiger as we walk through the permanent exhibition, to the wings of butterflies preserved in our collections.