Twelfth International Conference on The Inclusive Museum

Abstract

A grassroots initiative, Ja sam Muzej became a unifying campaign in Sarajevo. Local and international artists were invited to become symbolic dežurni (“people on duty”) for the museum in show of their support. In part due to indifference and in part due to the governmental arrangement of post-Dayton Bosnia, which provided no federal funding entity for cultural institutions, the Museum was closed and reopened several times, and finally closed for good in 2012. Equipped with graphic design visuals, social media accounts and YouTube videos that drew inspiration from the museum building, its history and artefacts, Ja sam Muzej produced and proliferated posters, postcards, t-shirts, and various memorabilia to promote the reopening of the museum. On its official website, the organizers presented the museum as a crucial site “to communicate to the younger population in Sarajevo and Bosnia and Herzegovina the importance of protecting this institution and to present it as a welcoming space that is vital for the urban community.” Established by the Hapsburg colonial administration of Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1888 as a cultural epicenter for the newly acquired province to collect, showcase and proliferate anthropological, archaeological and historical knowledge production and analysis of the population of Bosnia, Zemaljski Muzej served as an educational institution aimed at forging a post-Ottoman Bosnian national identity. It became an important tool in inventing, structuring, and synchronizing pre-Ottoman Bosnian identity with European history. This paper examines the ways in which the contemporary revival of the museum curates a colonialess past.