Difference between revisions of "Institute for the Protection of Cultural Heritage of Slovenia"

Revision as of 14:33, 12 May 2010

The Institute for the Protection of Cultural Heritage of Slovenia (IPCH) was founded in 1999, under the Cultural Heritage Protection Act. The IPCH comprises seven regional offices, the Restoration Centre and the Preventive Archaeology Centre. They perform public services in the area of the protection and conservation of immovable cultural heritage.

History

The Slovenian territory, whether as part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire or the Socialist Republic of Yugoslavia, can trace its history of conservation offices concerned with maintaining and restoring the territory's many monuments and buildings of cultural heritage all the way to 1850. More details of this history are revealed in the historical overview article about Slovenian cultural heritage and conservation.

In 2008 the Slovenian government passed a new law on natural and cultural heritage thus structuring the Institute for the Protection of Cultural Heritage of Slovenia as it is today.

Organisational structure

The IPCH comprises two main organisational units:

Cultural Heritage Service (Služba za kulturno dediščino) consists of 7 regional offices of the IPCH located in Celje, Kranj, Ljubljana, Maribor, Nova Gorica, Novo Mesto, Piran. A regional office in Murska Sobota is also planned.
Conservation Centre (Center za konservatorstvo) comprises the Restoration Centre and the Preventive Archaeology Centre.

Mission and tasks

The IPCH is active in the areas of conservation and restoration. It brings together art historians, archaeologists, architects, ethnologists, sculptors, painters and many other experts who work in the institute's various organisational units. The goal of the institute is to preserve and protect the cultural heritage of Slovenia, and to raise the broader public’s interest in cultural heritage, as well as to achieve a balance of cultural monuments of the past with the existing natural and cultural environment and new architectural achievements.

The institute has a variety of administrative and professional duties related to the protection of both immovable cultural heritage and the associated movable and living cultural heritage. Its domain is not only the numerous procedures linked to the direct conservation of heritage and the prevention of damage, but also the large number of measures aimed at incorporating heritage into modern life, presenting heritage to the general public and developing awareness of its value.

The maintenance of cultural heritage and the guidelines for work on built heritage or archaeological field examinations are the main tasks of the IPCH. Prior to work being carried out on cultural heritage a specification of the conditions and a cultural heritage agreement must be obtained from the competent regional office of the IPCH. On the other hand a preliminary archaeological research is managed and carried out by the Preventive Archaeology Centre of the institute.

The IPCH distributes information on the tenders of the Ministry of Culture related to immovable heritage, calls for subsidies and loans available for renovation, as well as offers consulting and case studies.

Photo galleries available at the institute's website are a rich resource on the Slovene 20th-century architecture, Baroque monuments, Secessionist architecture in Slovenia, mediaeval towns, early industrial heritage, historical parks and gardens, the legacy of Jože Plečnik as well as the latest archaeological findings in Ivančna Gorica, Blato pri Slovenskih Konjicah, Muzejski trg Koper, and Muljava.

Register

Experts of the IPCH and its corresponding regional offices are responsible for providing recommendations and data to a INDOK Cultural Heritage Centre at the Ministry of Culture which maintains the The Register of Immovable Cultural Heritage. The register is an official, computer-supported database of immovable cultural heritage in Slovenia under the responsibility of the state. All units of immovable cultural heritage are entered into the register regardless of their type, size, ownership and whether or not they are legally protected.

Exhibitions

The IPCH manages three exhibition places: the gallery Sava in Kokra in Kranj, the gallery Arkade in Grm castle in Novo mesto and the gallery Spomeniškovarstveni center in Ljubljana, where temporary exhibitions take place, such as Ko korenine spregovorijo, a sculptural exhibition by Ilija Čabarkap in 2010.

Publications

The institute devotes a great deal of attention to the promotion of cultural heritage in the form of lectures, guided tours of monuments, exhibitions, online presentations, pamphlets and the Spomeniškovarstveni razgledi publications series, as well as other forms of promotion that have become established in contemporary heritage protection.

Since 1948 the publication Journal for the Protection of Monuments [Varstvo spomenikov] has been issued, which is the foremost scientific publication of the institute. Another two serial publications are Cultural and Natural Monuments of Slovenia [Kulturni in naravni spomeniki Slovenije], which is a series of guidebooks, and A Series on Highway Archaeology [SAAS - Zbirka arheologija na avtocestah Slovenije].

International cooperation

The project Culthex is an important cross-border project within the European territorial cooperation. Slovenian Gorenjska and Austrian Carinthia cooperate at the field of the cultural heritage in order to establish a network of experts from different fields to help the owners of the heritage. The parters of the project that lasts 2009–2013 are beside the institute the Office of the Carinthian Government, Section 20, Planning, Klagenfurt, the Business Support Centre (BSC) Ltd, Kranj, and the municipalities of Bled, Radovljica, Tržič, and Gorenja vas – Poljane.

In 2009 the Institute for the Protection of Cultural Heritage signed a bilateral agreement on cooperation with the Smithsonian Institution, the largest institution in the cultural field in the USA as well as the largest museum complex and conservation centre in the world. The cooperation is focused on sharing common interests and knowledge and training new specialists.

Among the partners in the international cooperative project Identification of Wood and Dendrocronology are also the Metropolitan Museum of New York and the Smithsonian Institution.

In 2006 the institute also took part in the international project European Bridge for Sarajevo, which aimed at founding a Restoration Centre at the Academy of Fine Arts in Sarajevo.

European Heritage Days

In 1991 Slovenia, along with a number of other European countries and the Council of Europe, was one of the founders and initiators of the Days of European Cultural Heritage or DECH [Dnevi evropske kulturne dediščine (DEKD)]. Every September a series of events are organised in Slovenia. The DECH series published by the IPCH includes 16 bilingual publications, among them Historical parks and gardens in Slovenia (1995), The heritage of monastic order (1996), Art Nouveau architecture in Slovenia (1998), Medieval towns in Slovenia (1998), 20th century: Slovene architecture from modernism to contemporaneity (2001), Castles, fortresses and city walls (2006), and the most recent programmes dedicated to the architect Jože Plečnik (2007), and the father of written Slovenian language Primož Trubar (2008).

With these events the IPCH has been particularly successful in enhancing the image of cultural heritage promotion in Europe.

External links

@@ Line 121: / Line 121: @@
 *[http://giskds.situla.org/giskd The map of immovable heritage in Slovenia]
 * [http://www.mk.gov.si/fileadmin/mk.gov.si/pageuploads/Ministrstvo/dediscina/register/arcchip.pdf Paper from the Ministry of Culture on the Cultural Heritage Information System (CHIS) in the Republic of Slovenia]
+* [http://www.bsc-kranj.si/resources/files/doc/CULTHEX_Novice_t_1.pdf Project Culthex]
 [[Category:Conservation agencies]]