REMEMBRANCE IN TIME - Index of

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Remembrance in Time
Few of them have not permanent exhibitions and therefore are not objects of this survey.
In this study are examined 71 museums. All of them are dedicated to certain influential
historical figure – mainly an artist or another public man /woman. Several museums are
devoted to important families of intellectuals and politicians. The museums, devoted to
some great historical events, are excluded from this data base. In Bulgaria they are not so
many and as a rule they are parts of larger memorial complexes (museums, monuments,
churches or monasteries, historical buildings local cultural centers – chitalishta, and
architectural reserves). For this reason they would have to be object of more complex
analyzes; therefore they have been excluded from this observation.
In this text are explained some of my ideas about appearance of permanent exhibitions
of a large numbers of Bulgarian memorial museums. Under the focus of my reflections
are content highlights and aesthetic accents of museum narratives. I also take into account
different types of links between the exposure and the corresponding cultural environment.
The survey does not consider about small museum collections, open air museums,
temporary exhibitions, autonomous monuments and memorial signs, connected to the
public figures whose museums are subject of this interpretation.
All museums in the presented data base are subsidiaries to largest state or municipal
cultural institutions – national or regional museums, art galleries, municipal associations.
There are not museums in this group which were created or ruled from private companies
or citizen associations. According to the legislation on force, the Ministry of culture has
significant controlling functions to the creation and maintenance of permanent
exhibitions. However many exposures are obsolete and offer the audience unattractive
museum content. The main reason for this situation is the result of the slow change of
cultural paradigms in Bulgaria. Also it must be taken into account limited funding for
museum activities both at national and local level.
Museum subjects
Main characters of the memorial exposures are prominent historical figures with an
undoubted contribution to the national development in the 19 th and 20 th centuries. There is
no museum dedicated to any public figures that had lived and worked until the late 18th
century. Leading personalities of Bulgarian political and cultural revival are presented
particularly strong in permanent museum exhibitions. Some figures are symbolically
immortalized with three or two museums – Vasil Levski, Petko Slaveikov, Ivan Vazov,
Zahari Stoyanov, Penyo Penev. Exhibitions dedicated to the statesmen of the 20 th century
are a few. There are no museums of Bulgarian kings which governed the country during
the period of Third Bulgarian Kingdom (1879-1946). The only one museum is dedicated
to the ruler’s person. This is the museum of the Russian emperor Alexander II, known
among Bulgarians with nickname Liberator.
A considerable part of museums of communist leaders, which had functioned during the
socialist period, were gradually closed until the end of 20 th century. Nowadays exist three
of them as departments of Research institute of the Bulgarian Socialist Party. Museums of
the two leftist poets – Hristo Smirnenski and Nikola Vapzarov, remain components of
existing Bulgarian museum network. As an unusual exception during the last decade the
municipality in the town of Pravets continues to maintain and promote the memorial
museum of ex-communist leader Todor Zhivkov.