The exhibition The hidden treasures of Macedonia – the beauty that knows no borders presents a rich textile material collected in Macedonia at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries and during the fifties and sixties, which has been preserved in Dubrovnik as part of the museum collections.
Author: Branka Hajdić

The exhibition was created as a result of professional processing of the collected material during the project Kolo, poskočica, linđo and as a need to present to the general public valuable photographic material that testifies to the life of folklore in the Dubrovnik area today.

Traditional heritage is, especially after the Second World War, rapidly changing and some parts of it are irreversibly lost. That is why it is important to protect it, keep it, save it and give value to it.During the 19th and 20th century in Croatian regions of Moslavina, Posavina and Banovina a few of esteemed folklorists, literates, painters or local enthusiasts left their own work so we could try to investigate the looks of traditional costumes. Until today there are a lot of local keepers of heritage involved in local folklore groups who have passed on heir own heritage through song, music and dance.

It might be difficult to see a connection between road construction and the development of traditional costumes at first, but the two are actually inseparably linked. If we look at the traditional costumes through their fluidity and individuality generated at the time of their creation, the flow of people, fabrics, raw materials and ideas are crucial for their development through different periods of time and dress styles.

The central theme of the International Folklore Festival in Zagreb is the ethnographic and folklore wealth of the wider area along the historic Karolina and Lujzijana roads leading from Karlovac through Gorski Kotar to Rijeka, Croatian Littoral, Istria, and Kvarner…

The exhibition Intangible cultural heritage of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina from the collection of the Monastery of St. Elijah presents twelve cultural elements of the ethnographic collection from the Preliminary open list of intangible cultural heritage of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The List was put together by the Federal Ministry of Culture and Sports to include cultural phenomena that the Federation intends to nominate and include on the UNESCO Representative List of Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.

These include: Konjic woodcarving; egg shoeing in Kreševo; lacework – kera; pilgrimage to Ajvatovica – Prusac; pilgrimage to St. John – Podmilačje; pottery work in Liješevo; grass mowing customs in Kupres; ganga, the polyphonic singing form of rural tradition; the singing of sevdalinka, the musical and poetic form of urban tradition…