Exhibition created by Jadranka Sulić Šprem and Dalibor Andres
Exhibition design: Jadranka Sulić Šprem and Dubravka Tullio
Duration: from January 29, 2016
About the exhibition: Let’s Dive presents the photographs of submarine photographer Dalibor Andres, a diver who has combined his love for the sea and the underwater world with his favourite hobby, photography.
Exhibition created by Jadranka Sulić Šprem
Exhibition design: Jadranka Sulić Šprem and Dubravka Tullio
The creators of the exhibition set up received a commendation from the Croatian Museum Association for a creative and visually well designed approach in the production of an exhibition in 2015.
Duration: from December 15, 2015
About the exhibition: The adaptations made by deep sea organisms to low temperature, limited availability of food, high pressure, reduced oxygen concentration and absence of light were the inspiration for the title of the exhibition. Unease, stress, pressure, UNDER PRESSURE. The appearance of the set- up is linked with the big hit for Queen “Under Pressure”, which indeed makes this exhibition different from the run of the mill. The narrator of the exhibition is a royal flagfin fish, dressed in the best-known fashion creation of Freddie Mercury. For the purposes of the hanging of the exhibition, the Museum launched an initiative to collect old CDs and DVDs. In all, 10,000 were collected, and were used to make, among other things, the submarine Deepsea Queen, which takes us into the profundities of the Southern Adriatic Pit. The seabed is made of disks, a disco ball that creates movements in the space and museum objects of deep sea species of fish representing the deepest part of the southern Adriatic. Visitors can see museum objects of fish that in their natural surroundings live at depths of more than 800 metres. Visitors can become acquainted with the biology and ecology of the species on show via an application on interactive touch screens. Deep sea species have reduced bones and muscle mass, and their metabolism is slowed down increasingly with depth. The needs for movement that are related to visual interaction between predator and prey are reduced, i.e., movement is activated only if a predator or its prey is noticed. Some species have developed large jaws and stomachs, that enable any available prey to be captured. sea organisms have also adapted to life in the dark, where bioluminescence, or the ability of a living organism to produce and emit light, is the only source of illumination, by reducing or enlarging their eyes. For the sake of demonstrating bioluminescence to visitors, models of fish incorporating optical fibres have been made. Via an application on the interactive touch screens, visitors can dive down to a depth of 10,984 ± 25 m in the Marianas Trench where the greatest depth in the world has been measured, and during the dive find out the maximum penetration of light, the average depth of the oceans, the deepest point of the Atlantic and the Indian Ocean and so on. The visitors’ sense of hearing is stimulated not only by the single “Under Pressure” but also by the sound of the deep sea.
The exhibition catalogue is available in the Museum shop.
Exhibition created by Ana Kuzman
Exhibition design by Ana Kuzman, Šime Fabris and Damir Rašpolić
Duration: from January 30, 2015
About the exhibition: Two indigenous species of fresh water turtle live in the Republic of Croatia: the Balkan pond turtle or Mauremys rivulata and Emys orbicularis, the European pond turtle. The European pond turtle can be found in almost the whole of the area of the Republic of Croatia (in the inland, along the coast and on some of the islands), while the Balkan pond turtle lives only in Dubrovačko-neretvanska County. Both of them are strictly protected by the Nature Protection Law, while the Balkan pond turtle has the status of endangered species. People and their activities are most to be blamed for the reduction of the number of individuals in the population and the disappearance, degradation and fragmentation of the habitats of these species. There are countless examples of such activity, such as the regulation of water courses, urbanisation, failure to keep up habitats, introduction of invasive alien species, the concreting of banks and so on.
A catalogue of the exhibition is available in the museum shop.
Exhibition created by Jadranka Sulić Šprem and Ana Kuzman
Duration: from March 31, 2014
About the exhibition: The exhibition To the Honour of the City shows the history of the Museum itself in the period between 1860 and 1918, in other words, the time of the foundation of the Museum and the work of two very prominent personalities, Antun Drobac and Baldo Kosić. The Patriotic Museum (Museo Patrio) was founded at a session of the Commune Council on January 26, 1872, the grand opening coming in April the following year in the great hall of the Palace of the Commune, 2nd floor. Antun Drobac, after studying pharmacy in Padua, returned to Dubrovnik and opened a pharmacy in 1832. He collected bivalves, minerals, fish, snakes and various objects that were of cultural and historical interest. His collection, supplemented with objects from the collection of the Chamber of Commerce and Trades, formed the basis for the foundation of the Patriotic Museum. After learning of the insecticidal activity of pyrethrum or Tanacetum cineraria folium (Trevier.) Sch. Bip., he became the first serious producer and the first merchant in the powder made from dried pyrethrum petals. The production and sale was of great economic importance for the Dubrovnik area and for the whole of Dalmatia. He kept up with the state of the art in pharmacy and prepared ether for the first operation performed under ether inhalation narcosis, in Dubrovnik, just 10 months after the first such operation ever was conducted in Boston. After his studies in Genoa , Kosić returned to Dubrovnik, where he worked as a teacher of calligraphy and drawing, in elementary and later in high schools. After the death of Drobac he was unanimously elected Museum director. He kept a detailed inventory book in which a total of 1644 entries are written in order. Most of the entries that he made are of natural objects, i.e., objects that constituted the first collections of birds, fish, molluscs, reptiles and amphibians as well as mammals of the Dubrovnik region. He determined the objects himself and also conserved them; his great proficiency in making his dermoplastic preparations has been admired by experts from at home and abroad. He published scientific papers about the objects and collections that he had processed.
Exhibition created by Ana Kuzman
Exhibition design by Ana Kuzman and Maja Kovačević
Duration: from March 17, 2014
About the exhibition: The exhibition presents a group of invertebrates that includes very diverse individuals, fascinating in their shapes and colours, that we can find in all kinds of habitats in freshwater, saltwater and on land. But the current exhibition covers only marine representatives of the group – bivalves, snails and cephalopods. Although their name, mollusc, (Lat. moluscus – soft) characterises their soft bodies, one of their main characteristics is the hard shell that they secrete. The name of the exhibition is inspired by the sound of waves, the murmur of the seas, “captured inside them” they transmit when they are held close to the ear. The murmur actually is created by the air flowing through, or in fact, reverberating against the sides of the shell. The exhibition shows the history of collecting and the most noteworthy collectors, and the general characteristics of molluscs, the categories of them and so on. One special unit shows representatives of molluscs from the Adriatic Sea as well as protected Adriatic species.
The exhibition catalogue is available in the museum shop.
Exhibition created by Jadranka Sulić Šprem
Exhibition design by Jadranka Sulić Šprem and Maja Kovačević
Duration: from January 22, 2013
The exhibition is dedicated to natural historians and preparators who from the founding of the museum have taken part in the assembly of the ichthyological collection. The opening of the exhibition commemorated the 140th anniversary of the opening of the Patriotic Museum. As the title tells us, the exhibition represents the ichthyofauna of the waters around Dubrovnik, the first list of which was published in 1903. In his paper Fish of Dubrovnik, Baldo Kosić listed 191 species, and today, as a result of more intensive research, the number of fish species is much greater. The exhibition presents about 70 species that are to be found in the waters around Dubrovnik, whether they are common like the mullet or rare like the porbeagle shark. As well as museum preparations from the old collection, also shown are preparations acquired in the last two years.
A catalogue of the exhibition is available in the museum shop
Exhibition created by Nikola Rahme
Duration: from July 24, 2015 to November 11, 2016
About the exhibition: An exhibition of photographs of insects in their biotopes. Most of the exhibition material consists of photos of dipterans. The pictures can be divided into two different groups: prepared arthropods at great magnification and live creatures in their natural settings.
Exhibition created by Boris Jakešević
Duration: from August 8, 2014, to October 30, 2014
About the exhibition: The exhibition presents 39 photographs made by the author on his 2,000 kilometre journey in Vietnam.
Created by Nebojša Jeričević
Duration: from April 7, 2014, to July 25, 2014
About the exhibition: The exhibition features 22 photographs of flowers and flowery landscapes that the creator of the exhibition encountered on his walks around Korčula Island and Pelješac Peninsula. The clime from which it comes is exceptionally diverse and rich in its botany and has more than 1,100 plant species.
Exhibition created by Jadranka Sulić Šprem, Frane Čizmić and Tatjana Dobroslavić
Duration: From December 23, 2013 to November 3, 2014
Contact was made between the subtropical Mediterranean and the Tropical Red Sea when the Suez Canal was opened in 1869. The creatures that came into the Mediterranean from the Red Sea are called Lessepsian Migrants after the engineer Ferdinand de Lesseps who planned and supervised the digging of the Suez Canal. Although the canal runs both ways, more species migrated in the direction of the Mediterranean than the other way. Thus to date in the Mediterranean Sea more than 300 aquatic organisms of various taxonomic groups of have been recorded. And at least 82 species of fish have been recorded, Lessepsian Migrants that have had a serious effect on its ecology and have threatened numerous local and endemic species. Fourteen species have been recorded in the Adriatic that still have not much affected indigenous species, but any increase in their numbers could well threaten the equilibrium of the ichthyofauna. The exhibition puts the digging of the Suez Canal, that magnificent feat of engineering, into the broader geopolitical and economic context of events in the second half of the 19th century. Particular mention is made of the contribution made by Croatian people to this achievement.
The exhibition catalogue is available in the museum shop.
