Institute for the Protection of Cultural Heritage of Slovenia

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

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. 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.

Organisational structure

The IPCH comprises two main organisational units: the Cultural Heritage Service (Služba za kulturno dediščino) and the Conservation Centre (Center za konservatorstvo). The first unit 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. The Conservation Centre comprises the Restoration Centre and the Preventive Archaeology Centre.

Mission

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.

Register

Experts of the IPCH and its corresponding regional offices are responsible for providing recommendations and data to a separate service at the Ministry of Culture which maintains 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.

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. The IPCH has been particularly successful in enhancing the image of cultural heritage promotion in Europe through its series Days of Cultural Heritage. 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

In 2009 the Institute for the Protection of Cultural Heritage signed a bilateral agreement on cooperation with the Smithsonian Institution, which is 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.

In 2009 the IPCH cooperated in the ongoing project Identification of Wood and Dendrocronology. Among the partners 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.

External links

Institute for the Protection of Cultural Heritage of Slovenia

Contents