WORKS OF ART IN THE MUSEUM ASSOCIATION COLLECTION

EXPLORE

INVENTORY NUMBER 1

Paintings have power, they can replace words and open up views into completely unknown worlds.

In a joint project with Maribor Art Gallery in 2020, we are launching a series of activities dedicated to the study of the creation of the first collections of paintings and the centenary of organised artistic activity in Maribor.

The exhibition of the Maribor Regional Museum entitled INVENTORY NUMBER 1 presents paintings that came into the museum collection as a result of the work of the predecessors of the present museum - the Museum Society in Maribor, the Historical Society for Slovene Styria and the Diocesan Museum.

In the past decades we were mainly interested in the object as a work of art and as a document of a particular artistic style, environment and period. However in the context of the project INVENTORY NUMBER 1 we have also taken an interest in the donor or the collector, who for certain reason donated or acquired the object for his or her own or the museum's collection. The material is closely linked to Maribor and its inhabitants, and to the spirit of reflection and national identity at the turn of the 20th century.

We are convinced that these stories can be appealing to modern-day museum visitors.

You are kindly invited to delve into our virtual exhibition!

PAINTINGS IN THE COLLECTION OF THE MUSEUM SOCIETY

Unknown painter, Andrej Fleiss, Maribor leatherworker, late 18th century.

The association Museumverein in Marburg was founded in 1902 to support and accelerate the preparations for the establishment of the planned city museum, which would prevent valuable objects from being sent off to other museums. It focused its activities on collecting objects, as can be seen from the advertisements in the Marburger Zeitung, which were very frequent, especially in the early years of the association's existence. Appeals to the townspeople show that the association was also interested in paintings.

The museum was inaugurated on the 6th of December 1903 in the premises of the town's continuation school on the corner of today's Razlagova and Cankarjeva Streets. From 1902 to 1922, the Museum Society kept a record of the objects collected in an inventory book. The first entry is dated the 13th of September 1902. The first painting that can be identified with certainty in today's collection is a portrait of the Maribor leatherworker Andreas Fleiss. Donations were received from several citizens, but information on the pieces is scarce. As early as 1903, the Society approached the Maribor painters Lind, Moser, Hackel and others, in hopes to receive some paintings or copies and photographs for the museum.

From the entries in the inventory book, we can see that the donations from painters were not very numerous. The fact is, however, that the appeal of the Museum Society to the painters of Maribor can be regarded as the first known documented initiative to collect works by contemporary artists in the area of Maribor. The objective of the initiative was to supplement the museum collection. From this record we can also see which painters associated with Maribor at the beginning of the 20th century were important enough that the German-oriented Museum Society wanted to preserve their works for future generations.

After the First World War, the national structure of the Board and the membership of the Museum Society changed, as the majority of the members were of Slovene nationality. After 1924, the collected objects were partly entered in the inventory book of the Historical Society for Slovenian Styria.