Museum of Puppetry w/ Permanent Exhibition at the Ljubljana Castle

Lutkovni muzej in stalna razstava na Ljubljanskem gradu

The Museum of Puppetry as part of the Ljubljana Puppet Theatre houses the national collection of puppetry, which is being constantly updated. The Museum owns around 6000 material artefacts (set designs, drawings, posters, audio & video media, archival materials, etc.), including more than 3000 puppets from the legacies of Ljubljana Puppet Theatre archive, Milan Klemenčič, dr. Niko Kuret, Jože Pengov and other collections, all an important part of Slovenian cultural heritage.

The Museum aims to study Slovenian puppetry, which dates back over a century, and care for the collections, while encouraging the widest possible access to the puppets. For that purpose the Permanent Exhibition entitled Images of Slovenian Puppetry Art, 1910-1990 and a small theatre performing historical puppet shows have been set at the Ljubljana Castle in 2015. In addition, to symbolically emphasize the connection between participating institutions, the Puppet Path, which leads from Krekov trg along the funicular railway to both the exhibition space and the Castle Theatre, was established.

The establishment of the museum presents a pioneering work for Slovene puppet arts, as the material history of Slovene puppetry has never before been systematically researched, not to mention restored and exhibited. With this in mind, one of the primary objectives of the museum is to create the conditions for the proper care and long-term preservation of Slovene puppetry culture heritage.

History
Slovenia's tradition of recorded and preserved puppet theatre originates in the early years of the 20th century, when the main protagonist was the painter Milan Klemenčič (1875–1957), who established his own puppet theatre. Between the wars, the puppet theatres were greatly popularised and multiplied by the Sokol [Hawk] movement. By that time, puppetry was present to such an extent that in 1933, Ljubljana hosted the international puppet association UNIMA congress. After WWII, in 1948, the Ljubljana Puppet Theatre was established.

In 1990, Milan Klemenčič's daughter donated his legacy to the Ljubljana Puppet Theatre Museum Collection. The collection was set-up as a part of Ljubljana Puppet Theatre and while it is now incorporated into the museum, it is in a way also its predecessor. The material legacy of other early puppet theatres is now mostly housed in the Museum of Puppetry, but a lot still resides in various personal collections, regional, specialised museums and archives.

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