“MARK MUDRONJE REBCA COLLECTION” REGISTERED AS REPUBLIC OF CROATIA’S CULTURAL GOOD!.

In Murter on the 16th of December, the ethnological collection of the Municipality of Murter-Kornati, owned by Marko Mudronja Rebac’s family and located in the Murter-Kornati Tourist Board, received the certification from the Ministry of Culture and Media (Directorate for the Protection of Cultural Heritage) and it consists of 179 catalog numbers (187 items). Argonauta Association initiated and led the registration process.
This decision also determines the system of protection measures that the Municipality of Murter-Kornati as the owner must adhere to, thus the ethnological collection is entered in the Register of Cultural Heritage of the Republic of Croatia – List of Protected Cultural Heritage number – Z – 7481.

The local collection of Marko Mudronja Rebac in Murter is located in “Sokolana”, a stone house in the cultural and historical ensemble of Murter (2-3541), in the part called Selo. It was opened to the public in June 2017. The collection is owned by the Municipality of Murter-Kornati. I was donated to the Municipality of Murter-Kornati thanks to the enthusiasm of its founder Marko Mudronja Rebac (17.12.1935 – 21.01.2017), a versatile cultural amateur.

His life path led him from his native island to Zagreb and through Borje to Teslić in Bosnia and Herzegovina, where he worked in the wood industry until his retirement when he founded an amateur theater where he worked as an actor and director.
Returning to Murter, he continued his work, staging plays, singing and chairing the “Parish Choir”, collecting ethnographic and archaeological objects, documents, copies of maps, posters and photographs from the cultural history of Murter – around five hundred of them. A separate part of this Homeland Collection is the Ethnographic Collection, which documents the culture of housing, the way of doing business, knowledge and skills of the inhabitants of the first half of the 20th century and which can be divided into several units.

The exhibition of this collection was designed by Jelena Čurić, Marko’s granddaughter and Vedranko Balara, while the book Tragom Baštine was prepared by Marko’s daughter Anita Mudronja Pletenec and her husband Tomslav Pletenec.

Ethnographic objects are well preserved, diverse, they have a concise outline of the life of the inhabitants, and are of value. The Collection is one of its kind on the island and therefore of great importance to the local community.

Based on the documentation and facts, the Expert Commission for Determining the Properties of Cultural Heritage at its session held on November 16, 2021 determined that the Ethnographic Collection of Marko Mudronja Rebac from Murter has the status of cultural property in terms of Article 8 of the Law on Protection and Preservation of Cultural Heritage. Pursuant to Article 12, paragraph 4 of the same Act, a system of measures for the protection of cultural property (item 3 of the operative part of this Decision) and the obligation to register in the Register of Cultural Heritage of the Republic of Croatia – List of Protected Cultural Property (item 4 of the operative part of this Decision).

A few months after Marko Mudronja Rebac passed away, his family donated the collection to the Municipality of Murer-Kornati, which provided space for the Collection on the ground floor of the Sokolane building at the Rural Society of the Village in Murter. The collection was set up for public display by Vedranko Šikić Balara under the expert supervision of the Šibenik City Museum, especially by director Željko Krnčević and chief ethnologist Jadran Kale and Jelena Ćurić, granddaughter of the late Marko Mudronja, who restored and protected some of the exhibits. “As a family, we are always touched by the memory of Dida, and when it comes to this kind of thing, even more. Since 1992, when he returned to live Life at Home, his goal was to preserve Murter heritage collecting items to add to the collection that is today called the cultural asset of the Republic of Croatia. You’d be proud of it! ”

The collection is exhibited in three parts. The first part is dedicated to Murter’s amateur drama, Murter’s old societies, the Murter panorama and the Murter oil mill. The second part of the collection is dedicated to the parish choir, the church of Sv. Mihovil and the folk customs of Murter. The third, more intimate, is dedicated to Marko Mudronja Rebac himself.

With the financial support of the Municipality of Murter-Kornati, TZ Murter-Kornati and JU NP Kornati, the work on registration began in the summer of 2018 with the first contact of a former employee of Argonauta, Dina Missoni, with the Directorate for Cultural Heritage at the Ministry of Culture.

– “It took around 2 years and a half for the registration process, but we are pleased that this part is completed and that the collection is officially recognized as a cultural asset, which gives us opportunities to finance protection and valorization from the Ministry of Culture and EU funds. “- Argonauta.

– “Municipality of Murter-Kornati plans to apply the adaptation of the roof and floor of the Sokolana building to the tender from the Rural Development Program, which will greatly improve the spatial status of this collection and open further opportunities for presentation.” – OMK.

– “I would like to put special attention to the value of the joint work of Murter stakeholders in this step, I would like to thank everyone who participated and provided support to the whole process:

• Vedrank Šikić Balara – Head of Social Activities at OMK
• Jelena Ćurić, granddaughter and restorer
• Toni Turchinov, head of the OMK
• Željko Krnčević, director of the Museum of the City of Šibenik and other employees of the Museum
• Luka Ježina, Senior Officer for Development and Support of EU OMC Projects
• Assoc. prof. dr. sc. Jadran Kale – curator of the Museum of the City of Šibenik, ethnologist
• Dina Missoni, M.Sc. expert associate for cultural heritage in Argonaut at the time of the start of the registration process
• Mateja Bašić, director of the Murter-Kornati Tourist Board
• Šime Ježina, director of the Public Institution NP Kornati
• Ante FIlipović Grčić, responsible for the visual

…and to all my colleagues in Argonaut who did not let me give up. ”- says Ivona Jadrić, Development Director of Argonauta Association.

The next step will be the development and application of the Collection protection project “Call for Proposals for Public Needs in Culture of the Republic of Croatia for 2022”, which will include restoration of objects from the collection in Šibenik.