Notranjska Museum Postojna
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1 Jul 2011
15 Sep 2011
With a Fibula into Fable exhibition organised by Koper Regional Museum, Sergej Mašera Maritime Museum, Goriška Museum, Tolmin Museum, Ptuj – Ormož Regional Museum, and Notranjska Museum, Postojna
History
The idea of establishing a museum in the Karst region goes back in time before World War I, when speleologist Ivan Andrej Perko proposed an opening of the Scientific Cave Museum as early as 1912, but the concept was realised only after World War II, in 1947, as the Postojna Cave Museum at the initiative of painter Leo Vilhar (1899-1971), who also became its first director.
In 1974, following the merger of its speleological collections with those of the Slovene Academy of Sciences and Arts, the museum became a part of the Karst Research Institute and changed its name to the Karst Museum Collection. Following the failure of efforts to found a Slovene Museum of Karstology in the 1980s, in 1990 the Municipality of Postojna established an autonomous institution, today’s Notranjska Museum Postojna. In February 2015, a new permanent exhibition, Karst Museum, the unique presentation of Karst region, was set up as its part.
Mission
The Notranjska Museum collects and preserves movable cultural heritage and presents documents, photographs, maps and other interpretative materials relating to Postojna Cave and the surrounding Karst landscape. It organises different workshops and expert meetings relating to Karst topics. The conservation restoration workshop maintains the movable cultural heritage.
Venues
The museum administers various satellites, including the iron forge at Grahovo, Kravanjeva House in Cerknica, and it owns some museum items at the Predjama Castle. It also manages a small memorial room dedicated to local writer Alojz Kraigher (1877–1959) at Postojna Culture House, which can be visited by appointment.
Collections
Notranjska Museum Postojna has many departments: an archaeological department (collection of more than 1000 objects from all archaeological periods from Notranjska and Karst region), an ethnological department (collection of material, spiritual and social culture items), a biological department (collection of zoological, botanical, and osteological items and a collection of cave beetles from the Slovene and also Balkan peninsula), a history department (collection of items from, for example, the National Liberation Struggle, items of relevance to cultural history, items about the history of Postojna region or Postojna Cave), the conservation-restoration workshop and Pedagogical-andragogical department.
Notranjska Museum Postojna also has two external museum units: Fužina in Grahovo and Predjama Castle. Fužina is about 250 year old building, protected as a cultural and natural monument and defined as an open-air museum. Predjama Castle is a Renaissance castle built within a cave mouth.
Multimedia projects
In 2006 the museum cooperated together with the Institute for Conservation and Restoration in the multimedia project All Season Sounds of Planinsko polje to present the aural environment of Planinsko polje over a year.