Opening hours:
Tuesday - Sunday: 10:00-18:00
Opening hours:
Tuesday - Sunday: 10:00-18:00
EXPLORE
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!
Unknown painter, Hunting Still Life, late 17th century, from Branek Castle
The Maribor Regional Museum holds a collection of fine art, including paintings, sculptures and graphic works. The collection of paintings contains more than 1,000 works, which have come into the museum's collection in various ways. The predecessors of the Maribor Regional Museum are the collections of the Diocesan Museum, founded in 1896, the Museum Society, founded in 1902, and the Historical Society for Slovene Styria, founded in 1903. All three collections also included paintings.
Due to different methods of working and keeping inventory books, and the circumstances of the First and Second World Wars, it is not possible to determine in detail which paintings came into the collection of the Maribor Regional Museum from which society or museum.
Today, when we try to find out which painting was the first to be inventoried by consulting the current inventory book, we can be misled by the entry. In fact, under inventory number 1, a painting by an unknown painter entitled Hunting Still Life is recorded, which did not arrive at the museum until 1928.
Information about the first collected paintings must therefore be sought in the documentation of the predecessors of the Maribor Regional Museum. The paintings that the citizens of Maribor were able to see centuries ago belonged to private collections of the nobility. Only a few have survived to this day.
