17 July, 2018 - The Ethnographic Museum in Cetinje has a permanent setting for the first time since its opening. Until the final solution of the permanent exhibition is established, the museum showed its treasure to the public through occasional thematic exhibitions. The permanent setting now presents the national life and culture of the ethnically and religious heterogeneous population of Montenegro, from the middle of the 19th to the first half of the 20th century.
The Ethnographic Museum in Cetinje was founded in 1951. It was housed in the Billard Building until the disastrous earthquake in 1979, after which the entire fund of the object was deposited in the Government House building. In 1987, the Municipality of Cetinje handed over a building of the former Serbian mission to the National Museum, which was subsequently adapted for the needs of the Ethnographic Museum.
The Ethnographic Museum possesses valuable collections that testify the ways of business, nutrition, housing culture, textile work, dressing, weapons, musical instruments, and money. The permanent exhibition of the museum will be exhibited on two floors, so the audience will have the opportunity to see the characteristic items that relate to certain economic activities, such as: stockbreeding, farming, hunting and fishing, textile craftsmanship, crafts and the like, and a part of the setting is dedicated to the culture of living in the form of fragments from the interior of the rural and townhouses. Numerous traditional garments are now exhibited on the second floor, which makes up an integral part of the traditional Montenegrin clothing, such as jackets, jelek, koret, silk shirts. Almost all of them are very richly decorated with embroidery, usually with woolen, cotton, golden and silver threads.
The authors of the permanent setting are Blažo Markuš, Ljiljana Đurišić, Tatjana Rajković, Maja Dragićević Roganović and Aleksandra Blagojević. For the needs of the exhibition, from the rich and diverse fund, which counts about 4,500 items, because of the cramped space, about 400 pieces which can convey the folklife and culture of the ethnically and religious heterogeneous population of Montenegro have been chosen by the authors.
