NAJRANIJI PROJEKTI RESTAURIRANJA POKRETNE BAŠTINE POD VODSTVOM CVITE FISKOVIĆA
THE FIRST PROJECTS IN THE RESTORATION OF MOVABLE HERITAGE HEADED BY CVITO FISKOVIĆ

Summary/Abstract: In the period after the Second World War, the Conservation Institute in Split implemented restoration projects throughout Dalmatia, mostly on architectural monuments. The reason for this was the lack of local experts in Dalmatia, primarily those in the field of restoration and preparation. However, in spite of the difficult beginnings of the first organized conservation department, headed by the art historian Cvito Fisković from 1945 onwards, the archival records of projects implemented in the first years of the Institute’s work reveal the regularity of activities undertaken for the preservation of the painting and sculpture heritage along the coast. The activities included the following: protection of collections or individual pieces of artwork, creation and/or management of collections and museums, restriction of arbitrary transfer of artwork, issuing preventive measures of protection, and lastly implementation of restoration projects in cooperation with the then Federal Institute for the Protection of Monuments in Belgrade and the Restoration Institute of the then Yugoslav Academy of Arts and Sciences. Aside from preventive measures of protection undertaken in 1945 and 1946, when funds for the restoration of movable monuments had not yet been approved, as of 1947 there is evidence of the first projects in restoration, in cooperation with the Restoration Institute of the Yugoslav Academy of Arts and Sciences in Zagreb. Archival data reveal that these earliest projects were realized as part of the preparations for important public ceremonies. One example of such a project is when renowned pieces of artwork were transferred from the Croatian coast to the Yugoslav Academy of Arts and Sciences in Zagreb for the exhibit Twelve Centuries of South Slavic Art, which was to take place in Zagreb in October of 1947, on the occassion of the 80th anniversary of the Academy’s foundation.

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