Invitation to the exhibition “Atlantis. Small worlds“

In the “Staro selo“ Museum in Kumrovec the exhibition “Atlantis. Small worlds“ opens on 19 March 2025 at noon.

The Atlantis project is a research-exhibition project of the Museum of European Cultures in Berlin (Koordinierung Ostmittel- und Südosteuropa am Museum Europäischer Kulturen, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin), which is focused on the global phenomenon of disappearance of settlements through the prism of cultural, historical, political, economic and natural factors.

Around twenty settlements were analysed within the project: in the Czech Republic, Romania, Hungary, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Croatia and Moldova. The project is jointly implemented in collaboration with universities, museums, civil society organizations and artists from these countries. The disappearance and continuous downward trend of the number of people in many European settlements is a result of multiple traumas and social changes during the 20th and 21st century. The reasons for depopulation and disappearance of villages are various, while the history of each settlement is unique.

In the “Staro selo“ Museum Kumrovec some of the vanished settlements from the Croatian territory will be presented: Sutinske Toplice (Hrvatsko Zagorje), Zut, Kotarani and Gornje Jame (Bania), Završje (Istria), and Veliko and Malo Grablje (Dalmatia). After being presented in Croatia, all the selected vanished European settlements will be presented at the final exhibition of the Museum of European Cultures in Berlin.

The project Principal Investigator is Research Associate Andrea Vándor (Koordinierung Ostmittel- und Südosteuropa am Museum Europäischer Kulturen, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin – Preußischer Kulturbesitz), and the main collaborators are Lidija Nikočević, PhD, Ana Perinić-Lewis, PhD (Institute for Migration Research), Lana Peternel, PhD (Institute for Social Research in Zagreb), Filip Škiljan, PhD (Institute for Migration Research) and Ivana Škiljan, PhD (Museum Advisor of the Peasants' Revolts Museum).

The collaboration of the involved institutions is carried out as a separate activity, based on long-standing research by Filip Škiljan, PhD, Ana Perinić-Lewis, PhD, and Lana Peternel, PhD, collaborators on the project “Isolated People and Communities in Slovenia and Croatia“, financed by the Croatian Science Foundation.

The exhibition is open until 25 April 2025.