After a series of attempts, during the second half of the 19th and most of the first half of the 20th century, immediately after the end of the Second World War, in 1946, a museum institution was founded under the name: City Museum of Sremska Mitrovica.
The founding of the museum in Sremska Mitrovica is closely connected with the archeological finds from the time of the Roman city of Sirmium, when Amijan Marcellin (c. 330-400 AD), the last great Roman historian, called it the ‘crowded mother of cities’ – urbium matris populosae and celebrities.
However, due to the acquisition of social circumstances in the formation of the museum institution, the decisive factor was the historical monuments of church rites. On May 1, 1946, the Museum of Church Art (MCU) was opened in the “Small Church”, one of the first of its kind in the Democratic Federal Yugoslavia, with a ceremonial opening on June 30 of the same year.
Based on the Instruction of the Department of Education of the Main Executive Board of the Autonomous Province of Vojvodina of November 2, which also regulated museological issues, on November 23, 1946, the City Museum in Sremska Mitrovica was founded as a complex museum with archeological, ethnographic, historical, artistic and natural history collection. The City Museum also included the installation of the MCU, and the head of the institution, as a voluntary associate, was the arch. Branko Vasilić, Field work was organized on the territory of the then five Srem districts (Sremska Mitrovica, Sid, Romania, Stara Pazova and Zemun) through a network of associates – “Commissioner for Antiquities”. This way of working enabled the organization of thematic exhibitions and other activities of different scope and character, which, along with other assumptions (spatial and personnel), enabled the exhibition of the City Museum to be opened to the public on May 31, 1948.
Administrative and administrative changes in Srem, which occurred in the early sixties of the second half of the XX century, influenced the District Council of the People’s Committee of Sremska Mitrovica, on December 24, 1952, to change the name of the City Museum to MUSEUM SREMA, which transferred the institution to funding by the County. In the following period, until the end of 2011, there were several status changes in terms of activities, competencies of the institution and its financing. In 1953, the Museum of Srem included the newly established Art Gallery, which, in addition to the Permanent Museum Exhibition, the Lapidary of the Museum of Srem, the Museum of Church Art, the historical exhibition at the Memorial Park in Sremska Mitrovica, the permanent exhibition on the life and work of communists in prisons Kranjevine Jugoslavije Robija – school of revolutionaries, the Rohalj Base Memorial Exhibition and the permanent historical exhibition Srem through the centuries, for decades presented the past of Srem from the oldest prehistoric finds to the end of the Second World War (1945).
The complexity of museological activity was realized with the engagement of over 60 museum workers, in various capacities, and numerous museum associates, especially since the beginning of the first systematic archeological excavations of Sirmium (1957), when prominent Yugoslav and world renowned archaeologists participated in the work of archeological teams. became an important place on the museological map of Serbia and Yugoslavia. Some of the archeological discoveries owned by the Museum of Srem, such as: unique gold coins of Constantine the Great minted between 317 and 337, a marble sundial from the end of the 1st – beginning of the 2nd century AD, a gold reliquary from the first half of the 5th century. n. e. , 85 monuments of beneficiaries from the sanctuary of Jupiter, golden belt Avar furniture from the VII century and other important museums, not only from the Archaeological, but also other museum departments: Historical, Art History Department, Ethnological Department and Natural History Collection make it recognizable and specific to our spaces.
In addition to the presentation of museum material at permanent exhibitions, a significant type of presentation of all departments were thematic exhibitions, of which the most prominent are the following:
Exhibition of Slavic artists (1947),
Rare and old book from the 15th to the 19th century (1950),
Serbian manuscript and printed book;
The First Serbian Uprising and Vojvodina (1954),
Prehistoric cultures in Srem;
Pastels, drawings and graphics by Milivoj Nikolajević (co-produced);
Nadežda Petrović and the Beginnings of Modern Serbian Painting (co-production, 1963);
Serbian painting of the 19th century (in cooperation with the National Museum in Belgrade, 1965);
Jubilee exhibition of the Museum of Srem (1976),
The first exhibition of children’s art works (1987);
Roman Imperial Cities in Serbia: Sirmium – Romuliana – Naissus (co-production, 1994),
Icons and civic portraits from the collection of the Museum of Srem from the 17th to the 20th century (1995),
Sremska Mitrovica on old postcards 1890 – 1940 (1998),
Livestock and agriculture – objects from the ethnographic collection of the Museum of Srem (2001),
Acquisitions of the Museum of Srem 2001 – 2005 (2006),
Ice Age (guest exhibition, 2007)
and hundreds of other autochthonous, co-production and guest exhibitions of various scope and character.
A novelty in the work of the Museum of Srem was the information and propaganda activity defined through the Night of Museums event, organized for the first time in Sremska Mitrovica in 2008.
In addition to the above, and other activities implemented under the Law on the Protection of Cultural Heritage, the Museum of Srem paid special attention to the affirmation of the past of Srem. This type of activity also referred to the organization of various lectures and professional and scientific gatherings (with the participation of both domestic museum workers and prominent scientists from the country and abroad), such as:
On the importance of the Museum (1948),
History of Mitrovica through the centuries (1951),
Excavations of Sirmium in the modern life of Sremska Mitrovica (1960),
Baroque Evening (1963),
Substantial disputes between Serbs and Croats (1991),
Roman imperial cities in Serbia: Sirmium – Romuliana – Naissus (1994),
Hajducija in Srem in the 18th and the beginning of the 19th century; Controversies about the character of the war in Yugoslavia 1941 – 1945 (1995),
Scientific Conference “Ruvarac Brothers in Serbian Historiography and Culture” (1996),
Serbian People’s Movement in Vojvodina 1848 – 1849 (1999),
regional seminar for archaeologists and conservators from Southeast Europe organized by ICCROM, the National Museum in Belgrade and the Department for Preventive Protection DIANA in Belgrade (2006),
lecture The founder’s tomb of Despot Srefan Lazarević in the church of the Manasija monastery,
presentation Avar belt to the citizens of Srem (2007)
co-organizers of the RFRC meeting together with the National Museum in Belgrade 2010.
At the same time, the professional workers of the Museum of Srem participated in numerous professional and scientific gatherings organized in the Republic of Serbia, but also in other European countries from the near and far environment.
The publishing activity of the Museum of Srem is also rich and is crowned by the museum magazine Zbornik Muzeja Srema (1995, first issue – 8 issues have been published so far).
However, the first title published by the Museum of Srem, entitled: Contribution to the study of the past of the city of Sremska Mitrovica in the XVIII century, appeared in 1951, after which the museum workers and associates of the Museum of Srem, published by the Museum or as a co-publisher, saw numerous catalogs, monographs and studies, among others, and titles:
Sremska Mitrovica, (monograph, 1969),
Memorial Cemetery (1980),
Grgurevci u revoluciji (1986),
Sremskomitrovačka hronika (1987),
Sirmium – panorama of the Pannonian capital (1988),
Crimes and sins, Partisan village Manđelos (1990),
Icons and civic portraits from the collection of the Museum of Srem from the 17th to the 20th century (1995),
Traditional nutrition of Serbs in Srem (1996) collection of papers from the scientific conference “Brothers Ruvarac in Serbian historiography and culture”,
Money and Banking in the Past of Srem (1997),
Jews in Mitrovica (1998),
Famous personalities of Srem from the 1st to the 21st century (2003),
Roma in Srem (2004),
Sixty years of the Museum of Srem (1946 – 2006), (2006),
Sirmium – Sremska Mitrovica (chronology, 2011),
Bora Čekerinac
museum adviser, historian
Branko Vasilić, the son of the mayor of Mitrovica, Teodor Vasilić (1907-1914), finished elementary school and high school in Sremska Mitrovica. He studied and graduated from the Technical Faculty in Dresden (Germany). After studying and practicing in Dresden and Paris, he got a job in the civil service at the Construction Directorate in Zagreb (1928), where he remained until the end of the Second World War. During the Second World War, the People’s Liberation Movement helped illegally. After the war, for family reasons, he moved from Zagreb to Sremska Mitrovica, where he got a job in the District People’s Liberation Committee for Srem, at the Construction and Technical Department. The character of the work he performed, his educational profile and his pronounced affinity for cultural and historical monuments influenced his position that it was necessary to collect, preserve and present monumental treasures (data on Eng. Architect).
Irina Nepokojčickaj. An important place in the development of muelological activity in Sremska Mitrovica after the Second World War belongs to Irina Nepokojcickaja. A Russian emigrant who settled in Mitrovica with her parents as an eleven-year-old girl, after graduating from high school in Kikinda (1927), tried unsuccessfully to enroll in a painting academy in Zagreb. She continued her higher education in the same city, at the Technical High School (architectural department). After studying (1937), she got a job as a draftsman in the Hydraulic Engineering Department in Sremska Mitrovica. After the war, she was employed as an architectural engineer in the Construction and Technical Department at the Department of Settlements and Buildings, as a clerk in the Department of Buildings, which included design, construction and maintenance of architectural structures and control of all sectors of artistic and technical creativity. in the combination of affinity for art, acquired education and current work positions, builds and affirms the position on the need for protection and thus to make a full contribution to the installation of church art in Sremska Mitrovica.
