Regarding it’s 65th anniversary, in partnership with the Museum of Arts and Crafts, the Festival will open a retrospective exhibition under the name of ‘Memory Creators – photographers and designers of the Dubrovnik Summer Festival’, which will take place on Friday, 11th July at 9 p.m. in the Palace Sponza Atrium.
Over the course of the past 65 years of the Festival, countless photographers, some of which are today’s great names of the Croatian photographic history such as Toso Dabac, Duro Griesbach, Vilko Zuber, Marija Braut, Nenad Gattin, Kresimir Tadic, Slobodan Tadic, Enes Midzic, Pavo Urban, Ana Opalic, Damil Kalodera and others, have systematically marked the Festival’s events, as well as have notable artists and designers, such as Edo Murtic, Fedor Vaic, Branko Kovacevic, Ivo Grbic, Edo Kovacevic, Tomo Gusic, Luka Gusic, Boris Ljubicic, Orsat Frankovic and others, who created posters and front pages, even complete visual identities of particular Festival years. Although their work has been abundantly used in many publications, their authorship has not been specifically distinguished, until now.
Apart from recalling it’s past seasons, the Festival wishes to honor it’s associated photographers and designers by releasing a catalogue containing the authors’ biographies, which focused on their work with the Festival. Art history prof. dr. sc. Marija Tonkovic is the author of the exhibitions formal conception. Preparations for the exhibition lasted an entire year, as the material had to be collected from multiple sources due to part of it being lost in the war year od 1991. This, however, created an ideal chance for supplementing and reconstructing the Dubrovnik Summer Festival’s archive using the newly collected, now digitalized material.
The exhibition is a joint project of the Dubrovnik Summer Festival and the Museum of Arts and Crafts Zagreb, in partnership with the State Archive in Dubrovnik and Croatian Radio television, supported by Epson, with the help of several other institutions and individuals.
The exhibition can be viewed from 19th August in the Palace Sponza Atrium and the Visia Multimedia Centre, where a total of 34 posters and 107 photographs will be displayed. A multimedia presentation and a video projection of drama and dance performances by the Dubrovnik Summer Festival selected from the Croatian Radio television’s archive, will also be a part of the exhibition.
