Croatian Natural History Museum Day
18 December – MUSEUM DAY
Programme marking the museum’s birthday.
The Museum is open from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m.
Free admission to all programmes.
Discount on museum publications.
1:00 p.m. ► opening of the exhibition Fossils in the Flow of Time and Artistic Impression
The exhibition “Fossils in the Flow of Time and Artistic Impression” is the result of ten years of exceptionally successful complementary cooperation between the Croatian Natural History Museum and the School of Applied Arts and Design in Zagreb.
The programme was held under the title “The Magical World of Fossils”, regularly every year in May, marking International Museum Day. The constant increase in the number of students participating in the workshops, as well as the inclusion of new school departments, demonstrates the exceptional interest in cooperation with the Museum’s curators and in working with museum collections. The students’ artworks created through these workshops prove that fossils can be viewed in a completely different “light” and experienced as inspiration and a challenge for artistic creation.
Each of these fossils is unique and unrepeatable, both in its external form and in its intricate internal structures, which in cross-sections often resemble unexplored labyrinths. However, despite their uniqueness, each of them offers countless possibilities for different interpretations, including very personal experiences.
The exhibition includes highly interesting graphics, impressive sculptures, attractively designed jewellery, unique ceramic artefacts, originally designed textiles, as well as excellent photographs, professionally verified by the heads/mentors of individual departments of the School of Applied Arts and Design in Zagreb.
Not only the interest and attractiveness, but also the confirmed quality of the students’ works inspired the idea of marking a decade of successful cooperation with the exhibition “Fossils in the Flow of Time and Artistic Impression”. The aim is to present to the wider public selected fossils from the rich geological and palaeontological holdings which, over the past period, served as inspiration and motifs for the artistic expression of the workshop participants, as well as the students’ works created during this original and interesting programme.
Author: Katarina Krizmanić
2:00 p.m. ► Dr. Goran Zlodi – presentation of the museum’s new website
2:30 p.m. ► Dr. Davorka Radovčić – lecture entitled Complex Behaviour of the Krapina Neanderthals
Until recently, the appearance of various forms of complex behaviour was exclusively associated with anatomically modern humans, because such finds were first discovered and recognised at African palaeoanthropological sites. The oldest artistic objects or traces of symbolic behaviour at European sites were recognised only from approximately 40,000 years ago, when anatomically modern humans reached Europe.
However, recent discoveries of white-tailed eagle claw remains and other artefacts found at various European sites, as well as the oldest such find recognised at a Croatian site from the beginning of the Late Pleistocene, 130,000 years ago, present us with a different picture of the earliest evidence of symbolic behaviour in human evolution.
New discoveries in the Krapina palaeoanthropological collection, together with the latest evidence from other Neanderthal sites across Europe, prove the independent evolution of complex and symbolic behaviour already among Neanderthals in Europe, approximately 80,000 years before the appearance of anatomically modern Europeans.
5:00 p.m. ► free guided tour of the museum exhibition
6:00 p.m. ► workshop The Kingdom of Minerals
Workshop leader: Petra Šparica
The workshop is intended for children aged 6+