“Croatia’s Great Women – Here’s Who They Are”: NSK marking International Women’s Day 2023
On 8 March 2023, marking this year’s International Women’s Day, the National and University Library in Zagreb (NSK) will host the opening of Croatia’s Great Women – Here’s Who They Are, a special exhibition dedicated to the courage, intelligence, creativity and dedication of notable women who marked Croatian cultural heritage.
Featuring resources in the Library’s collections, especially those preserved as part of its Print Collection, Manuscripts and Old Books Collection and Music Collection, the exhibition will spotlight the life and work of eight Croatian prominent female writers and artists in the field of visual arts and music Marija Jurić Zagorka, Ivana Brlić-Mažuranić, Vesna Parun, Vjera Bojničić, Anka Krizmanić, Fani Daubachy Brlić, Ivana Lang and Blanka Chudoba. A virtual exhibition on the 20th-century composer and pianist Ivana Lang will also be part of the exhibition programme, along with murals created through the Library’s cooperation with the Zagreb Academy of Fine Arts of which the more recent, entitled ‘The Witch of Grič’ (Grička vještica), has been dedicated to Croatia’s first professional female writer, journalist and journal editor Marija Jurić Zagorka and the other, entitled ‘Corals returned to the sea’ (Koralji vraćeni moru), to one of the greatest authors of Croatian literature and the most translated Croatian woman poet Vesna Parun, the centenary of whose birth the Library marked in 2022.
The mural dedicated to Marija Jurić Zagorka, created under the supervision of the Academy’s collaborator Dr Melinda Štefčić, authored by Anamarija Kvas and co-painted by Kvas and Manuela Košević, both students of the Academy, was prompted by the 150th anniversary of Zagorka’s birth, while other significant anniversaries, such as the 85th anniversary of the death of a six-time nominee for the Nobel Prize for Literature Ivana Brlić-Mažuranić, 140th anniversary of the birth and the 60th anniversary of the death of painter and printmaker Vjera Bojničić, the 140th anniversary of the death of painter Fani Daubachy Brlić (Franjica Daubachy-Doljska Brlić) also provided the background for NSK celebrates women, the Library’s 2023 programme that the Croatia’s Great Women… exhibition will be held as part of.
