The European Association for Asian Art and Archaeology at the Maritime Museum Piran

Experts in Asian culture from various museums, universities and other scientific institutions from Europe, East Asia and the USA came to see the occasional exhibition  Fragments of the Far East: Objects from East Asia in the Mariners’ Collections, which was guided by Bogdana Marinac, the museum councillor and author of the exhibition. Through the permanent exhibitions, on the other hand, they were guided by the museum councillor Snježana Karinja. New contacts and acquaintances were made with the participants, who were full of praise for both the occasional exhibition and the permanent collections, with the acquaintances also leading to new insights into the origins of the objects from East Asia housed by the Piran Museum.

The artefacts from the mariners’ collections were also presented at the conference held in Ljubljana. Bogdana Marinac spoke about the mariners and their purchases of various items in East Asia in the period of Austria and the Austro-Hungarian Empire, while Dr Chikako Shigemori Bučar from the Department of Asian Studies of the Faculty of Arts in Ljubljana threw light on two paintings of Austro-Hungarian warships by an unknown Japanese painter, which are also housed at the Maritime Museum Piran.