ICOM Awards won by the Museum of Applied Art

Dear collaborators and friends of the Museum of Applied Art,

It is my great pleasure to inform you that the Museum of Applied Art in Belgrade has won two awards of the National Committee of ICOM Serbia in 2008/2009 which we received at the ceremony in the Gallery of Frescoes on the 21st of May 2009.

Awards Commission

• Olja Vasić, chairperson
• Branislava Jordanović
• Dr Nenad Radić

unanimously voted that the award in the Project of the Year category should be given to the Museum of Applied Art for the Autobiographic retrospective exhibition of Dušan Petričić. The exhibition curator was Slobodan Jovanović. The award for the curator of the year was given to Dušan Milovanović, museum advisor at the Museum of Applied Art for the representative exhibition Treasures of Chilandar Monastery with a supporting two-volume publication.

The exhibition Autobiographic offered insight into the work of Serbian-Canadian caricaturist and illustrator Dušan Petričić (1946). During past four decades Petričić has been publishing his works in most important Serbian, Canadian and American dailies and weeklies. He illustrated thirty three books for children and grown-ups, and his graphic solutions made more joyful childhood of many generations of young Yugoslavs and Canadians. The exhibition included a richly designed catalogue of over 300 pages with written contributions by Slobodan Jovanović, Bogdan Kršić and Rastko Ćirić. According to Dr. Irina Subotić the exhibition was “staged with inventiveness and ingenuity”.

The exhibition Autobiographic of Dušan Petričić enjoyed widest publicity and certain journalists and experts deemed it was the cultural event of 2008. The author was given the April Award of the City of Belgrade.

The exhibition and publications Treasuries of Chilandar Monastery by Dušan Milovanović came as result of thirty years of his explorations of applied art objects kept in the treasuries of Chilandar Monastery or in Serbia but with Chilandar provenance. After thirty years of devoted and industrious work, his knowledge of Chilandar applied art could be presented to the public as part of life in general, importance, impact and history of Chilandar. The contemporary and attractive exhibition together with documentary and fact-oriented material related to Chilandar treasuries and renovation of the Monastery showed also exhibits from the Museum collections which their style, period of manufacture or other reasons connect them to the Chilandar treasuries. It is worth noting that by publishing the Study Collection I Dušan Milovanović made possible for the female part of the population to get a glance at Chilandar treasuries and find pleasure in them.