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Organized by the Institute for Philosophical and Religious Studies (IFRŠ) at ZRS Koper, the Centre for Asian Studies (CAŠ) at ZRS Koper, the Department of Asian Studies at the Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana, and The Slovenian Ethnographic Museum, the symposium “Project Museum: Private and Public Collecting of Non-European Objects in the Early 20th Century” will take place in Ljubljana on 22–24 April 2026.
In the first half of the 20th century, Europe experienced a surge in collecting practices that blurred the boundaries between private enthusiasm and public display. Individuals—travelers, missionaries, scholars, entrepreneurs—assembled collections of non-European objects, often presenting them as “museums” that reflected personal visions, ambitions, or claims to cultural authority. At the same time, numerous public institutions, as well as the Catholic Church and other missionary organizations, began establishing non-European collections and integrating them into broader institutional and ideological frameworks.
The symposium »Project Museum« is dedicated to exploring these intertwined practices of collecting, interpretation, and display. With a focus on the shifting relationships between the private and public spheres, it raises questions about how objects circulated across domestic interiors, ecclesiastical environments, and emerging museums. It also foregrounds reflections on how issues of authorship, authority, knowledge transfer, and representation shaped the collecting landscape in the early 20th century, and how these collections—temporary or permanent—contributed to the idea of the museum as a cultural project.