85
Between Ethnology and Cultural History: 
Where to Place East Asian Objects  
in Slovenian Museums?
Nataša VAMPELJ SUHADOLNIK*
Abstract
While a few larger collections of objects of East Asian origin entered Slovenian mu-
seums after the deaths of their owners in the 1950s and 60s, individual items had begun 
finding their way there as early as the nineteenth century. Museums were faced early 
on with the problem not only of how to store and exhibit the objects, but also how to 
categorize them. Were they to be treated as “art” on account of their aesthetic value or 
did they belong, rather, to the field of “ethnography” or “anthropology” because they 
could illustrate the way of life of other peoples? Above all, in which museums were 
these objects to be housed?
The present paper offers an in-depth analysis of these and related questions, seeking to 
shed light on how East Asian objects have been showcased in Slovenia (with a focus 
on the National Museum and the Slovene Ethnographic Museum) over the past two 
hundred years. In particular, it explores the values and criteria that were applied when 
placing these objects into individual categories. In contrast to the conceptual shift from 
“ethnology” to the “decorative and fine arts,” which can mostly be observed in the cat-
egorization of East Asian objects in North America and the former European colonial 
countries, the classification of such objects in Slovenia varied between “ethnology” and 
“cultural history,” with ethnology ultimately coming out on top. This ties in with the 
more general question of how (East) Asian cultures were understood and perceived in 
Slovenia, which is itself related to the historical and social development of the “periph-
eral” Slovenian area compared with former major imperial centres.
Keywords: National Museum of Slovenia, Slovene Ethnographic Museum, East Asian 
objects, museum classification, ethnology, cultural history, art
* Nataša VAMPELJ SUHADOLNIK, Associate Professor at the Depart-
ment of Asian Studies, Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana.
 Email address: natasa.vampeljsuhadolnik@ff.uni-lj.si
DOI: 10.4312/as.2021.9.3.85-116
86 Nataša VAMPELJ SUHADOLNIK: Between Ethnology and Cultural History:...
Med etnologijo in kulturno zgodovino: kam umestiti predmete iz Vzhodne 
Azije v slovenskih muzejih?
Izvleček
Medtem ko so večje zbirke vzhodnoazijskih predmetov v slovenske muzeje vstopile po 
smrti lastnikov v 50. in 60. letih 20. stoletja, so posamezni vzhodnoazijski predmeti pot 
do muzejev našli že v 19. stoletju. S tem so bili muzeji soočeni s problemom hrambe in 
razstavljanja teh predmetov, predvsem pa z vprašanjem kategorizacije. Ali naj bi jih zaradi 
njihove estetske vrednosti obravnavali kot »umetnost« ali pa raje spadajo na področje 
»etnografije« ali »antropologije«, saj ponazarjajo način življenja drugih ljudi? Predvsem pa, 
v katere muzeje pravzaprav sodijo?
Ta prispevek prikaže poglobljeno analizo tovrstnih vprašanj, pri čemer se osredotoči na 
primer Narodnega muzeja in Slovenskega etnografskega muzeja v zadnjih dvesto letih. 
Posebej izpostavi vrednote in merila, po katerih so bili posamezni predmeti razvrščeni v 
različne kategorije. V nasprotju s konceptualnim premikom iz »etnologije« v »dekorativno 
ali likovno umetnost«, kar lahko opazujemo v kategorizaciji vzhodnoazijskih predmetov v 
Severni Ameriki in nekdanjih evropskih kolonialnih državah, je klasifikacija teh predme-
tov v Sloveniji nihala med »etnologijo« in »kulturno zgodovino«, pri čemer so večjo noto 
dobivale etnografske oznake. To je povezano tudi z bolj splošnim vprašanjem, kako so bile 
(vzhodno)azijske kulture videne v Sloveniji, kar je samo po sebi povezano z zgodovinskim 
in družbenim razvojem »perifernega« slovenskega prostora v primerjavi z nekdanjimi ve-
čjimi imperialnimi središči.
Ključne besede: Narodni muzej Slovenije, Slovenski etnografski muzej, vzhodnoazijski 
predmeti, muzejska klasifikacija, etnologija, kulturna zgodovina, umetnost
Introduction
After opening its doors in 1821, the Provincial Museum of Carniola—the first 
museum in present-day Slovenia and the predecessor of the National Museum—
went on, in the first ten years of its existence, to acquire Chinese and Japanese 
porcelain dishes, seven ivory figurines and a series of twelve colour paintings de-
picting Chinese warriors (Deschmann 1888, 164; Štrukelj 1980–1982, 138–39). 
In subsequent years the museum acquired even more Chinese and other non-
Euro pean objects, and later also individual collections. Austria–Hungary’s estab-
lishment of diplomatic relations with China, Japan and Siam in 1869 opened up 
new opportunities for travelling to East Asia.1 As a result, an increasing number 
1 As a member of the Eight-Nation Alliance that brought the Boxer Rebellion (1899–1901) to an 
end, the Austro-Hungarian Empire also gained the right to a concession in Tianjin. For more on 
the Austrian Concession in Tianjin see Lee Chinyun (2001, 74–92), and Lipušček (2013, 42–44).
87Asian Studies IX (XXV ), 3 (2021), pp. 85–116
of Chinese and Japanese objects arrived in Slovenia via various routes, later enter-
ing Slovenian museums as donations or purchases. The acquisition of these objects 
confronted the museum staff with the conceptual problem of where to place them 
within the existing taxonomy of their institution and, thereby, also with questions 
relating to the interpretation of non-European objects. Should they be labelled as 
“art” in recognition of their aesthetic value or did they belong, rather, to the field 
of ethnography or anthropology since they could show how people lived in an-
other region of the world?
Shifting between these disciplinary boundaries in the search for the most appro-
priate methodological framework was not unique to the Slovenian area, though, 
but reflected broader European colonial policy and imperialism. At around this 
time there emerged a new kind of institution: ethnographic museums, which 
housed many  non-European objects for the purpose of studying, classifying, eva-
luating and occasionally exhibiting these “exotic” items—mostly in ways that were 
influenced by colonialist thought. The rise of ethnology promoted the perception 
of such objects as carriers of ethnographic information about the cultures that 
had produced them. The information thus obtained was regarded as the most “ob-
jective” available, and the objects themselves were seen as metonyms for the en-
tire culture from which they originated (Tythacott 2011, 142). By the turn of the 
twentieth century the classification framework had changed and the objects were 
now perceived chiefly as artworks, especially in the United States (Conn 2000), 
whereas the situation in Europe was more complex. The evaluation of non-Euro-
pean objects there fluctuated between science and art, with the boundary between 
the two being quite fluid. As a result of archaeological expeditions and the grow-
ing number of excavated artefacts that entered museums in the early twentieth 
century, archaeology came to play the role of a medium facilitating the transition 
of an object’s status from ethnological item to artwork and vice versa (Lee 2016, 
5–6). This is especially true of the classification of Asian objects, which have gen-
erally been treated differently from other non-European artefacts. Craig Clunas 
(1997, 421) shows that as early as the mid-nineteenth century there was a tenden-
cy to set apart objects made in China, Japan and India from the material culture 
of other more “primitive” peoples, as may be seen, for example, in David Mather 
Masson’s guide The British Museum, Historical and Descriptive (1850). Asian ar-
tefacts were regarded as superior to those of other non-European cultures and 
enjoyed a status that was comparable, albeit still not equal, to that of European 
culture.
Drawing on the taxonomic categories described above—categories that influ-
enced significantly the early perception of non-European cultures in Western so-
cieties—the present paper will explore the classification and general perception of 
88 Nataša VAMPELJ SUHADOLNIK: Between Ethnology and Cultural History:...
East Asian objects in Slovenian museums. Focusing on the National Museum 
of Slovenia (the country’s principal and oldest museum) and the Slovene Eth-
nographic Museum (which was detached from the National Museum in 1923), 
we will examine the values and criteria used to place these objects into cate-
gories. In contrast to the conceptual shift from “ethnology” to the “decorative” 
and “fine arts” based on a diachronic approach to Asian art that may largely be 
observed in the interpretation of East Asian objects in North America and the 
former European colonial countries, the classification of such objects in Slove-
nia oscillated between “ethnology” and “cultural history”, with ethnology com-
ing out on top. A general reevaluation of East Asian objects did not gain mo-
mentum in Slovenia until the first two decades of the twenty-first century. This 
ties in with the more general question of how (East) Asian cultures were under-
stood and perceived in Slovenia, which is itself related to the historical and so-
cial development of the “peripheral” Slovenian area compared with former ma-
jor imperial centres. Accordingly, the paper will also consider various elements 
that influenced the perception of East Asian cultures and how these were cat-
egorized, taking into account the historical and social context of both the Slo-
venian area and the wider European region. This is followed by a discussion of 
how East Asian art was gradually institutionalized and assimilated into the sci-
entific disciplines of Sinology and Japanology, which were officially established 
as academic programmes at the University of Ljubljana in 1995. Finally, some 
thoughts are offered on the “privilege of periphery.”
The Provincial Museum of Carniola: Between Ethnology  
and Cultural History
Very soon after the Provincial Museum of Carniola in Ljubljana, the capital of 
the region then known as Carniola, was founded in 1826 by decree of the Aus-
trian emperor Franz I, the first East Asian objects found their way into the mu-
seum (see fig. 1). Chinese and Japanese porcelain coffee saucers were donated as 
early as 1833 by the Countess von Hohenwart and the Baroness von Lazzarini 
(Deschmann 1888, 164). In the same year, Baron Karel Smledniški contributed 
seven Chinese ivory and wooden figurines, while three years later, the provincial 
councillor Thomas Plushk from Villach donated a series of twelve colour paint-
ings depicting Chinese warriors (Štrukelj 1991, 167). In subsequent years the 
museum acquired further Chinese and Japanese objects, and later also individual 
collections. Among the latter it is worth mentioning the collection of the mission-
ary Peter Baptist Turk, who sent several Buddhist and Daoist statues, as well as 
other religious objects, to the museum in 1912 and 1913. Renamed the National 
89Asian Studies IX (XXV ), 3 (2021), pp. 85–116
Museum of Slovenia in 1921, the institution became, in 1957, the custodian of a 
very large collection of various Chinese objects that had been bequeathed to the 
nation by the former Austro-Hungarian naval officer Ivan Skušek Jr. In addition 
to Chinese objects, the museum also acquired several other non-European objects 
from North America, Africa, other areas of Asia and islands in the Pacific Ocean, 
donated mostly by missionaries, travellers, sailors and diplomats.
Figure 1. Heinrich Wettach: Provincial Museum of Carniola, aquarelle, around 1900. (Source: 
Wikimedia)
The main principles used in categorizing Asian and other non-European objects 
in the second half of the nineteenth century can be inferred from the guide to the 
Provincial Museum of Carniola published in Laibach (Ljubljana) in 1888 (Führ-
er durch das Krainische Landes-Museum Rudolfinum in Laibach), whose author was 
the museum’s curator, the Carniolan politician and scholar Karl (or Dragotin) De-
schman (1821–1889). Through a thorough overview of the collections and individ-
ual objects, the guide reveals the basic classification of the objects. In addition to 
archaeology and the natural sciences, special emphasis is placed on ethnographic and 
cultural-historical objects. The categories of “art” or “decorative arts” per se were ap-
parently not yet established, but a separate section, albeit only five pages long, is de-
voted to paintings and archival materials (pamphlets, drawings, miniature paintings 
and other documentation). Porcelain, majolica and glass are listed under a separate 
heading in the table of contents, but are described under the section of cultural-his-
torical objects. In such a classification, the objects of East Asian origin are placed 
under the ethnographic and cultural-historical categories.
90 Nataša VAMPELJ SUHADOLNIK: Between Ethnology and Cultural History:...
The guide thus makes a distinction between ethnographic and cultural-historical 
objects, but the definition of both categories is still rather vague. Although there is 
a certain intertwining of the two in that the ethnographic objects were subsumed 
into the section on cultural-historical objects, the table of contents at the start 
does list the cultural history and ethnographic sections separately. The latter sec-
tion comprises Asian and other non-European collections (mainly donations by 
missionaries and travellers), while the cultural history section includes individual 
objects of Chinese, Japanese, Indian and Turkish origin. These are mostly richly 
decorated export porcelains and metal products, especially weapons inlaid with 
gold and silver, donated to the museum by Carniolan aristocrats. 
The distinction between the two categories was based on the objects’ provenance, 
rather than on their origin. Thus, further examination reveals that the justification 
for including objects in the category of cultural history was whether they had once 
been owned by prominent and wealthy members of Carniolan society. Among the 
recorded donors we find the historian and politician Henrik Costa; Count Franz 
von Hohenwart, who was the museum’s first warden from 1831 to 1836, and his 
wife; the patron of the arts Viktor Smole; the Baroness von Lazzarini; and Bar-
oness Barbara von Rechbach. The individual objects of Asian origin assembled by 
them can be regarded as a legacy of the Kunstkammern, or “cabinets of curiosities”, 
special rooms showcasing extraordinary objects that had fascinated the Europe-
an aristocracy ever since the Renaissance, and of Baroque chinoiserie. Legitimacy 
for according to these objects a status comparable to that of European ones was 
determined by their being a kind of symbolic heritage of the Carniolan elite. This 
is confirmed by the display of the objects. While individual Asian objects of local 
provenance were housed alongside the European objects, the ethnographic col-
lections were placed in a separate room, together with Carniolan handcrafted and 
industrial products from earlier periods but in separate display cases. 
In the fourth exhibition room, in addition to metal and partly wooden products 
of Carniolan origin, the same showcases were also used to display, for example, 
a Japanese chandelier in the shape of a turtle carrying a heron; an Indian iron 
shield; two Indian axes with silver inlays; two Indian sabres with silver handles 
and blades inlaid with gold; Chinese iron stirrups with inlaid silver and brass flo-
ral decoration; and, a donation from Henrik Costa, Chinese cutlery (Deschmann 
1888, 124–32). Between displays of carvings, wooden ornaments, images of Christ 
and crucifixes, we also find two Chinese cups with figures; five Chinese figurines 
made of ivory; a Chinese boat; and, donated by Baroness Barbara von Rechbach, 
a Chinese comb (ibid., 132–40). The special exhibition room for majolica, ceram-
ics, porcelain and glass also housed richly decorated Chinese and Japanese por-
celain: visitors here could admire seven Japanese vessels of various shapes; a large, 
91Asian Studies IX (XXV ), 3 (2021), pp. 85–116
elaborate Chinese bowl with a cover; a cylindrical Chinese tureen; a Japanese and 
a Chinese porcelain plate in bright colours with gold ground, both of which had 
been donated by Count Franz von Hohenwart; a Chinese cup with animal motifs 
from the Countess von Hohenwart; ten smaller Japanese cups (used for drinking 
coffee) from the Viktor Smole collection (fig. 2); and a Japanese coffee cup that 
had once belonged to the Baroness von Lazzarini (Deschmann 1888, 159–67).
Figure 2. Porcelain dish from Viktor Smole’s collection. (Source: National Museum of Slove-
nia, Ljubljana)
The provenance of the above-listed East Asian objects from the collections of 
members of the Carniolan elite was the decisive factor that put them into the 
category of cultural history at the museum. To some extent, this suggests a rec-
ognition of their aesthetic value and a perception of these objects as represent-
ative samples of “Chinese” or “Japanese” art. In contrast, objects donated or sent 
by missionaries and other travellers were placed among the ethnographic col-
lections. Ethnology was still a vaguely defined term in the second half of the 
nineteenth century, but it tended to be equated with the study of non-European 
peoples. In this respect, scholars from the Slovene ethnic region, which was part 
of the Habsburg monarchy, followed mainly the German conceptual scheme 
of culture (Hudales 2003, 74). The application of an ethnographic lens only to 
exotic objects brought back by missionaries and travellers further betrays the 
influence of Western colonial politics and imperialism. For the objects served 
as carriers of scientific information about “primitive” cultures and as evidence 
of the alleged backwardness of the societies that had produced them. We may 
conclude that while the non-European collections contributed by missionaries 
92 Nataša VAMPELJ SUHADOLNIK: Between Ethnology and Cultural History:...
and travellers were used primarily to obtain more or less accurate information 
about the social life and customs of foreign peoples, Asian objects of “Carniolan 
provenance” in the museum were treated in those years as proof of the refined 
cultural and aesthetic tastes of the local elite. Ethnology or ethnography was 
shaped by missionaries and travellers; cultural history by aristocrats and arising 
middle class.
The Slovene Ethnographic Museum: (East) Asian Objects  
as Carriers of Ethnographic Information
Although separate categories of “art” or “decorative art” were not included in De-
schmann’s guide, the terms such as “art”, “historical art objects”, “art collections”, 
“works of art” are used repeatedly in the guide, usually referring to the collections 
of wealthy individuals acquired by the museum or to various European/Slove-
nian paintings and sculptures. Furthermore, the Handbook for Art Development 
in Austria (Handbuch der Kunstpflege in Österreich), published in Vienna in 1902, 
fourteen years after Deschmann’s guide, also clearly lists the Provincial Museum 
of Carniola as one of the institutions dealing with art. The museum was to cover 
natural sciences, history, ethnology, cultural history and art history, all with a focus 
on Carniola (Weckbecker 1902, 446; see also Kos 2020). This also emerges from 
a somewhat later Guide to the Collections of National Museum, published in Lju-
bljana in 1931. Apart from a lengthy part on archaeology, the section on fine arts, 
presenting mainly paintings and sculptures, was included as a separate category, 
written by the art historian France Stelè, one of the pioneers of the art historical 
discipline in Slovenia. This reveals that “art” as a classification entered Sloveni-
an museums in the early twentieth century, though the term was mostly tied to 
paintings and sculptures.
As Kos (2020, 23) notes, two major events further determined the museum’s ori-
entation and collecting policy: the detachment of the Slovene Ethnographic Mu-
seum from the National Museum in 1923 and the establishment of the Nation-
al Gallery in 1918, which received more than six hundred works of art (mainly 
paintings and sculptures) from the National Museum. The criteria for dividing 
the objects among the three institutions were not entirely clear, but the scope and 
nature of the museums were thus further defined. The National Gallery was to 
become the main “art” museum in Slovenia, housing mainly paintings and sculp-
tures; the National Museum was to preserve archaeological and historical objects 
of cultural heritage that would contribute to the strengthening of national iden-
tity, and the Ethnographic Museum was to study objects of ethnographic value. 
93Asian Studies IX (XXV ), 3 (2021), pp. 85–116
While a large number of paintings and statues were transferred to the National 
Gallery, most of the East Asian objects were transferred to the Ethnographic Mu-
seum, including various Chinese Buddhist and Daoist statues sent to the museum 
by the Franciscan missionary Peter Baptist Turk in the early twentieth century.
The creation of the Slovene Ethnographic Museum thus marks the next stage in 
the interpretation of Asian artefacts. Except for individual Asian objects of “local 
provenance” that had been separated from other non-Western collections already 
in Deschmann’s guide, the new museum took over all Asian and other non-Eu-
ropean collections. It is worth noting that it was mainly individual ceramic and 
porcelain pieces that were not transferred and, accordingly, are still kept in the 
National Museum (as part of its ceramics collection). Most of the other items 
listed by Deschmann ended up in the Ethnographic Museum. From the guide to 
the cultural history collections of the National Museum published in 1931 it is 
clear that the bulk of the East Asian material is no longer housed there; the chap-
ter on handicrafts just mentions briefly, in the section on ceramics, that the col-
lection also contains “a few pieces of Chinese and Japanese porcelain” (Mal 1931, 
146). This suggests that in Slovenia, too, the medium of porcelain had attained 
the special status of a “relic” of the European aristocracy (and of its obsession with 
exotic objects made of unknown material), but the categorization was still in flux. 
Interestingly, the Ethnographic Museum listed in its inventory a large Chinese 
bowl with colourful genre scenes that had originally been acquired by the Pro-
vincial Museum of Carniola as part of Viktor Smole’s legacy (Štrukelj 1980–82, 
139). However, the bowl is in fact still housed at the National Museum together 
with the other ceramics. The fact that some porcelains were meant to be or actu-
ally were transferred to the Ethnographic Museum, while others remained in the 
National Museum, clearly illustrates inconsistency in the criteria used to catego-
rize—and ultimately house—East Asian porcelain.2
The period from the establishment of the Ethnographic Museum in 1923 to 1964, 
when the Museum of Non-European Cultures was set up as a separate branch 
in Goričane, may be described as the second phase of the interpretation of East 
Asian objects in Slovenia. The dominant note during this period was sounded by 
ethnography. While the distinction made between ethnology and crafts or deco-
rative/applied arts (these being a partial successor of cultural history) was applied 
2 It is also possible that all East Asian porcelains were intended for the Ethnographic Museum. Bo-
ris Orel (1953–1954, 144), who became director of the Ethnographic Museum in 1945, pointed 
out irregularities in the transfer: certain objects taken over and inventoried by his museum had re-
mained in the National Museum for unknown reasons. (Some of the objects had been inventoried, 
others not, but were still intended for the Ethnographic Museum). Owing to the ambiguous and 
incomplete documentation, it is difficult to verify this now.
94 Nataša VAMPELJ SUHADOLNIK: Between Ethnology and Cultural History:...
to porcelain, all other non-European collections were categorized as belonging to 
the field of “ethnography” and many of them were subsequently transferred to the 
so-called ethnographic collections of America, Africa and Asia (Promitzier 2003, 
295). During these years the Ethnographic Museum was mainly oriented towards 
constructing a Slovenian national identity by extolling the manifestations of folk 
culture in local architecture, interior design, ornamentation and national dress.3 
This is eloquently demonstrated by the reports on museum work in the periodical 
Etnolog (see Rogelj Škafar 1993, 46–52), and also by the mounting of permanent 
exhibitions. While sixteen rooms were allocated to the display of Slovenian col-
lections, there were only two rooms for the non-European objects (ibid., 9).
As early as 1924, the art historian Stanko Vurnik was appointed a curator at the 
Ethnographic Museum, but he applied the art-historical method of classifica-
tion by stylistic types mainly to the study of objects of folk culture. As a result, 
objects of non-European origin were pushed into the background. Tina Palaić 
(2019, 189) points out, though, that one should bear in mind that very few new 
non-European objects found their way into the museum at that time. Neverthe-
less, the range of non-European objects that it received from the National Mu-
seum was certainly not negligible. As previously mentioned, the National Muse-
um had acquired a large collection of Buddhist statues and other religious objects 
from Hankou and Shanghai in China that were sent to the museum in 1912 and 
1913 by the missionary Peter Baptist Turk. These were duly categorized as ethno-
graphic material and later transferred to the Ethnographic Museum.
Another example of how East Asian objects were viewed from the angle of ethno-
graphy is provided by the inter-institutional transfer of the Skušek collection to the 
Ethnographic Museum. In 1957, the National Museum had officially taken over an 
extensive collection of diverse Chinese objects assembled by the Austro-Hungari-
an naval officer Ivan Skušek Jr. (1877–1947) during his almost six-year stay in Bei-
jing between 1914 and 1920 (fig. 3). However, in January 1963 the entire collection 
was transferred to the Ethnographic Museum (Štrukelj 1980–82, 140). Bogdana 
Marinac (2020, 8) reveals that there were discussions on establishing a museum of 
Chinese art in the coastal city of Piran, but it was the touristic potential of such a 
museum, rather than the cultural and artistic values of the collection, that interested 
the local politicians. The Villa Istria in Portorož, near Piran, was to have housed the 
collection, but Skušek’s Japanese widow, Tsuneko Kondō Kawase (married name: 
Marija Skušek) (1893–1963), who after his death had offered the collection to Pi-
ran, decided to abandon that plan owing partly to the unresolved ownership of the 
house. As a result, the entire collection ended up in the National Museum. This was 
3 For more information on the Ethnographic Museum’s role in this process, see Rogelj Škafar (2003).
95Asian Studies IX (XXV ), 3 (2021), pp. 85–116
in fact what Ivan Skušek himself had wished: “If I die, the museum will get the col-
lection. No one else would be able to appreciate it.” (Skušek, n.d.)
Although the subsequent transfer of the Skušek collection from the principal state 
institution devoted to Slovenia’s historical heritage to a museum housing folk 
and ethnographic treasures was linked to the acquisition of the Baroque mansion 
Goričane in Medvode, where the Ethnographic Museum opened a branch for its 
non-European collections, it does reflect how it was seen as more appropriate to 
display Chinese objects alongside other non-European objects, rather than along-
side local historical artefacts and national art.
Figure 3. Ivan Skušek and Tsuneko Kondō Kawase in Beijing, between 1918–1920. (Source: 
Photo Archive of the Slovene Ethnographic Museum, Ljubljana; the original is kept by his 
great nephew Janez Lombergar)
The Museum of Non-European Cultures: A Return to the Concept 
of Cultural History
Significantly, the transfer of the Skušek collection to the Ethnographic Muse-
um stimulated interest in the non-European objects housed there. The relevant 
collections had already begun to attract greater attention in the first decade after 
96 Nataša VAMPELJ SUHADOLNIK: Between Ethnology and Cultural History:...
World War II, following the appointments of the ethnologist Boris Orel as direc-
tor of the museum in September 1945 and of Pavla Štrukelj, also an ethnologist by 
training, as a curator in 1955. Štrukelj systematically examined and re-inventoried 
all the non-European objects, made the material available to researchers for study 
purposes and acquired new objects (Palaić 2019, 190–91).4 In 1964, the Museum of 
Non-European Cultures was set up as a branch of the Ethnographic Museum for 
the preservation, study and display of objects from non-Western cultures.
The creation of this new institution opens the third phase in the interpretation 
of Asian objects in Slovenian museums, when there was a return to an empha-
sis on cultural history. This must partly be understood against the background 
of the Non-Aligned Movement that emerged as part of the post-World War II 
wave of decolonization, and the resulting political and ideological atmosphere. 
After the split between Tito and Stalin in 1948, Yugoslavia was forced to adapt 
to the polarized world of Cold War and gain its sovereignty. Yugoslav president 
Josip Broz–Tito (1892–1980) found the alternative mode in the united force of 
developing countries to support each other in national development and oppose 
all forms of colonialism and imperialism. It was officially launched in Belgrade in 
1961. The former Yugoslavia thus entered into various forms of cooperation with 
other members of the Non-Aligned Movement, which brought political self-con-
fidence and economic benefits. One of the connecting factors in the Movement 
was culture: many of the member countries condemned cultural imperialism and 
emphasized cultural diversity as a means of overcoming Eurocentric tendencies 
in art (Piškur 2019, 15–16). This gave new impetus to ethnographic museums, 
cultural and artistic exchanges, exhibitions and other initiatives. While in Bel-
grade, the capital of Yugoslavia, a museum dedicated exclusively to African art 
was established, the Museum of Non-European Cultures near Ljubljana became 
the first Yugoslav institution whose mission was to acquire, preserve and display 
non-European collections (Palaić 2019, 194; Piškur 2019, 17).5
Although the favourable political atmosphere increased interest in non-Europe-
an collections, the lack of staff at the new museum and the striving to organ-
ize as many exhibitions and events as possible, which was part of general ef-
forts to promote the image of the Yugoslav State, made systematic research 
difficult. From its foundation in 1964 right until 1990, when renovation of the 
Goričane mansion began, only one curator, namely Pavla Štrukelj, was respon-
sible for all non-European collections. The scope of the work she carried out is 
4 For more information on Pavla Štrukelj and her work, see Palaić (2020).
5 For more on the links between the collections policy of the Museum of Non-European Cultures 
and the Non-Aligned Movement, see Palaić (2019).
97Asian Studies IX (XXV ), 3 (2021), pp. 85–116
astonishing. In addition to reinventorying the older collections and cataloguing 
new acquisitions, she curated as many as 83 exhibitions with rich accompany-
ing programmes during her 26 years at the museum (Palaić 2020, 25). But this 
intensive tempo and her involvement in the preparation of so many exhibitions 
prevented her from conducting more in-depth research.
Drawing on analysis of Štrukelj’s texts, Tina Palaić (2020) argues that despite 
the anticolonial attitude of the Non-Aligned Movement, the perception of 
non-European collections among the museum staff in the second half of the 
twentieth century continued at least partly to be informed by a colonial dis-
course, where Slovenian collectors were portrayed as “white protagonists” and 
a distinction was made between Slovenians and “Others”. In this regard it is 
interesting to see Štrukelj returning to Deschmann’s concept of cultural histo-
ry when categorizing the Skušek collection. At the same time, she also viewed 
the collection from an ethnographic perspective, which points to a certain in-
consistency and ambiguity in the criteria she used (Štrukelj 1965–1966, 57). 
This is apparent, among other things, in Štrukelj’s discussion of a Manchurian 
garment depicting a dragon with five claws (fig. 4). After a brief report on the 
owner of the collection, her article focuses exclusively on a detailed analysis of 
the clothing and places it in the context of China’s historical, social and cultur-
al development. As references she cites foreign experts, including the renowned 
American historian and sinologist Edward Schafer, whose research had focused 
on Chinese contacts with neighbouring peoples and cultures during the Tang 
dynasty (618–907). She describes the garment as “a significant piece of clothing 
from the Chinese imperial court of the nineteenth century,” adding that it was 
of a value “rare in our country” (ibid., 58). By acknowledging “high art in the 
embroidery of fabrics and other clothing” (ibid., 63), which China in addition 
to science had developed very early on in its history, she elevates the Qing court 
garment to the category of decorative art. However, aesthetic values most likely 
were not the decisive criterion in her categorizing. In Štrukelj’s research papers 
on Chinese objects one can recognize a combination of approaches based on 
ethnography, decorative art and cultural history. If for Deschmann in 1888 the 
main criterion had been the link to the Carniolan elite of the early nineteenth 
century, which had sought to gain even higher status by collecting exotic objects, 
for Štrukelj it was the provenance of the Skušek collection from the Chinese 
imperial court that brought prestige to the individual objects and by implication 
to the museum as the new institutional owner.
98 Nataša VAMPELJ SUHADOLNIK: Between Ethnology and Cultural History:...
Figure 4. Chinese robe with dragons with five claws. (Source: Skušek collection, Slovene Eth-
nographic Museum, Ljubljana)
When restoration work began on the Goričane mansion in 1990, Chinese and 
other non-European collections were moved to the depository, which meant that 
exhibitions and research activities based on the East Asian collections had large-
ly to be interrupted. Further degradation of the collections followed after the 
closing of the Museum of Non-European Cultures in 2001, which coincided 
with the denationalization of the Goričane mansion. The collections have since 
then been transferred to the new premises of the Ethnographic Museum on Me-
telkova Street in Ljubljana (Čeplak Mencin 2012, 117), where they still more or 
less lie dormant in a depository. There was a short-term revival of interest in the 
objects in 2006 thanks to the organization of the 16th biennial conference of 
the European Association for Chinese Studies in the Slovenian capital and, in 
particular, the initiative of Professor Mitja Saje from the Department of Asian 
Studies at the University of Ljubljana to stage a larger exhibition that would 
present cultural contacts between Slovenia and China to international sinolo-
gist colleagues. Ralf Čeplak Mencin, the curator of the exhibition, followed the 
conceptual design of “classical” ethnological collections, focusing on the stories 
of the collectors, but he also selected objects from as many as twelve different 
99Asian Studies IX (XXV ), 3 (2021), pp. 85–116
Slovenian public and private institutions in order to offer a panorama of the cul-
ture and art of China (see also Šmitek 2007, 275–76). This landmark exhibition 
can be regarded as the first step towards the gradual institutionalization of Chi-
nese art as a field of study in Slovenia, which began to develop in parallel with 
the new academic discipline of Sinology at the Department of Asian Studies in 
the University of Ljubljana.
The Absence of an “Art Discourse” in Slovenian Museums: 
Archaeological and Imperial Objects and the Role of Collectors 
The incorporation of East Asian material culture into the Western aesthetic can-
on occurred in Europe in the early twentieth century, although the boundaries in 
museum taxonomy between ethnography, archaeology, decorative arts and ori-
ental antiquities were not rigid. During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, 
East Asian collections in Slovenian museums were situated by scholars mainly in 
the realm of ethnography, with occasional forays into cultural history. The initial 
classification points to a separation of non-European collections from individual 
Asian objects of local (that is, Carniolan) provenance: the latter were mostly the 
legacy of a fascination with Chinese products as “exotic”, which gave them pride 
of place in the nobility’s “cabinets of curiosity”. 
An ethnological thrust was also noticeable in the missionary exhibitions and fairs 
that were once common in all major European and American cities. During the 
international fair held in Ljubljana in 1930, one pavilion hosted a “missionary and 
ethnological exhibition”. Alongside the many objects collected by missionaries in 
Africa, Asia, America and Oceania, the ethnological section also included objects 
that had nothing to do with such missions. These were Chinese objects, such as 
furniture, screens, chandeliers and porcelains, many of which had been lent to the 
exhibitors by Tsuneko Skušek, the Japanese wife of Ivan Skušek, and were pre-
sented in one Chinese and one Japanese room (Motoh 2020, 37). This would fur-
ther suggest that Asian objects were perceived as purely ethnological records of 
the cultures that produced them. A review of the history of missionary exhibitions 
organized in Slovenia until World War II undertaken by Helena Motoh (2020) 
reveals that later exhibitions in the 1930s also showcased diverse “ethnological” 
objects from China and Japan, including Buddhist statues, Chinese furniture and 
textiles, coins, books and even paintings. These exhibitions’ emphasis was on the 
Slovenian missionaries who as part of a small nation had contributed significant-
ly to the international missionary movement, whereas the aesthetic values of the 
Asian objects on display remained largely unnoticed.
100 Nataša VAMPELJ SUHADOLNIK: Between Ethnology and Cultural History:...
The treatment of East Asian objects as belonging to the realms of ethnography or 
ethnology continued in later decades, and it may be seen in other Slovenian muse-
ums too. For example, the collections of Asian and South American objects stored 
at the Celje Regional Museum have likewise been placed into the category of eth-
nology. Under the same category are listed objects that were sent or brought to 
Celje by Alma Karlin (1889–1950) from her eight-year travels around the world. 
Similarly, the objects brought home by sailors from voyages in East Asia and 
other world regions that are now stored at the “Sergej Mašera” Maritime Museum 
in Piran are included in the category of ethnology. To this day, (East) Asian ma-
terial in Slovenia has been studied mainly from an ethnological angle, rather than 
from that of art history. The only exception is the collection of Japanese ukiyo-e 
prints that are classified as “art history” at the Celje Regional Museum. This clas-
sification was most likely inspired by hierarchical Western notions of art, accord-
ing to which paintings represent the highest form, but the fact that these prints 
still remain unexplored by art historians indicates that they are not seen as equal 
to other paintings and graphics of European origin.
What are the reasons for the absence of an “art discourse” in the Slovenian mu-
seum and academic community? To answer this question, let us first turn to the 
European market and developments in other European countries. A conceptual 
shift in the perception of East Asian objects, as may be observed in former Eu-
ropean colonial powers, was accelerated by the wave of entirely new objects that 
found their way into Europe in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. 
The political upheavals in China and the triumph of British troops in the Opium 
Wars of the mid-nineteenth century literally “opened” Chinese space to foreign-
ers. The sacking of the Summer Palace in Beijing by an Anglo-French expedi-
tionary force in 1860 further enabled artefacts of imperial provenance to enter the 
European market for the first time. The first of many auction sales of looted items 
marked “from the Summer Palace at Pekin” took place in London the following 
year (Pierson 2014, 227). It is estimated that around 1.5 million objects from the 
palace were looted or destroyed, some of which are now stored in 2,000 museums 
in 47 countries around the world (Macartney 2009 in Tythacott 2018, 12). The 
range of objects in question does not reflect Chinese aesthetic ideals, since the 
looters left behind masterpieces of painting and calligraphy while taking away 
objects of higher monetary value. Still, the objects were advertised as “trophies” 
and “treasures” from a “celebrated” location, which elevated them to symbols of 
Western power (Pierson 2018, 74). Further Chinese objects reached Europe as a 
result of the plundering and destruction of imperial residences and princes’ palac-
es after the Boxer Uprising between 1900 and 1901, the fall of the Qing dynas-
ty in 1911 and the conversion of the Forbidden City into the Palace Museum in 
101Asian Studies IX (XXV ), 3 (2021), pp. 85–116
the 1920s, which was accompanied by major theft and embezzlement (Yeh 2011, 
178–79). The appearance on the market of exquisite and high-quality artefacts 
with a unique provenance, which differed greatly from the Chinese export art de-
signed to cater to the aesthetic criteria of the European elite, helped to transform 
the understanding of Chinese material production in the West.
Another major factor that accelerated the change in emphasis in the interpreta-
tion of East Asian objects from ethnology, via decorative art or archaeology, to art 
was the archaeological material unearthed during the construction of China’s first 
railways in the early twentieth century and during archaeological expeditions led 
mostly by foreign experts. All these developments, to which one should add the 
aesthetic revolution sparked by cubist and surrealist artists, who celebrated the 
spontaneity and vitality they discovered in the “exotic” cultures of non-European 
peoples (see Clunas 1997, 428; Tythacott 2011, 162), along with the new material 
production it inspired, forced the museum and academic community to reconsider 
their focus on a definition of human civilization based on Renaissance ideals. In 
this process, the status of Chinese objects vis-à-vis those from rapidly moderniz-
ing Japan also changed. Japanese objects that had initially been accorded a higher 
status were now considered to be greatly indebted to Chinese culture, and the in-
terpretation of Chinese objects as artworks gained further momentum. While all 
later products, particularly those from after the Qianlong Emperor’s reign, were 
seen as reflecting a degradation of Chinese culture, objects from early periods of 
Chinese history were praised as evidence of superior “civilizational” achievements 
(Clunas 1997, 429; see also Beattie and Murray 2011, 42–43). 
Furthermore, imperial objects were imbued with the narrative of the victory of the 
European order over Chinese “disorder”, of the technologically advanced West 
over the backwardness of Chinese society. These dynamics led to greater emphasis 
on the materiality of the objects and their aesthetic dimensions, but at the same 
time denied a “civilizational” role to the Chinese, who were seen as crude savages, 
idle and dull (see also Pagani 1998, 28). In a discussion of the Goncourt brothers’ 
collecting strategy, Ting Chang (2011) concludes that they valued “Chinese ob-
jects” exclusively for their materiality, ignoring altogether the social background 
of how they were produced. This attitude is also reflected in the rejection of con-
temporary tendencies in Chinese art and in indifference towards the inhabitants 
of modern China, as evidenced by the emphasis on historicism and rarities in 
gallery displays in the West (see also Lee 2016, 6). This sociopolitical and cultur-
al discourse encouraged an increasingly systematic collection of Chinese objects, 
which, drawing on Eurocentric notions of China and driven by market economy 
principles, became particularly pronounced at the turn of the twentieth centu-
ry. The main features of these objects that whetted collectors’ appetite were the 
102 Nataša VAMPELJ SUHADOLNIK: Between Ethnology and Cultural History:...
historical period to which they belonged and their archaeological connections. 
Large-scale archaeological excavations, in particular, shaped the dynamics of the 
art market, contributing to the emergence of collectors of East Asian artefacts as 
a new type of collector and to a reappraisal of the objects on the strength of their 
distinct aesthetic properties.
The presence of archaeological material and artefacts of imperial origin in the 
European art market, therefore, catalysed the major cultural shift towards the 
perception of Chinese objects as “decorative or fine art” in most of Europe. The 
absence of such material in Slovenian collections, in contrast, accounts for the 
continuing use of “ethnographic” labels. With the exception of a few Chinese 
coins dating back to the Warring States Period (475–221 BC), there is no archae-
ological material at all in East Asian collections in Slovenia. Most of the objects 
date from the nineteenth and the early decades of the twentieth century; some 
have been dated to earlier periods, but further studies are needed to verify this. 
Artefacts of imperial provenance offered for sale at various auctions in London 
and Paris from 1861 onwards also failed to reach the Slovenian ethnic territory, 
which was then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
The latest research on East Asian objects kept in various Slovenian museums indi-
cates that these were obtained mainly via direct contacts between individuals from 
the Slovenian area and East Asia.6 Objects obtained indirectly (for example, by 
purchase at auctions or through personal contacts) did of course circulate among 
the elite and higher nobility to a certain degree—as indicated by a samurai ar-
mour, lacquered cabinets, porcelain dishes and other items in the museums—but 
the Communist policy of confiscating valuable objects from noble families and 
wealthy individuals after World War II means that researching their provenance 
is now almost impossible. Most of the objects were thus obtained directly by pur-
chase in East Asia in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, facilitated 
by the growing presence of the Austro-Hungarian military and merchant ships 
in East Asia.
The Austro-Hungarian Empire was a multinational state with several important 
cultural and scientific centres, but in comparison with other European imperial 
powers its navy was still quite small in the first half of the nineteenth century. 
Its colonial interests were oriented primarily towards the Balkans, where it for-
mally annexed Bosnia in 1908. Not until the latter half of the nineteenth cen-
tury did Austria–Hungary begin to expand its navy and to turn to East Asia in 
search of cheap raw materials and new markets—especially after the opening 
6 For a more comprehensive overview of East Asian objects and collections strategy in Slovenia, see 
Vampelj Suhadolnik (2019; 2020).
103Asian Studies IX (XXV ), 3 (2021), pp. 85–116
of the Suez Canal in 1869 had given it a slight advantage over the other naval 
powers. Already in September of that year it concluded a trade agreement with 
China and opened a consulate in Shanghai. Increasing numbers of merchant 
and military ships sailed into East Asian waters, there by securing for Austria–
Hungary a share—albeit a small one—of the eastern Chinese territories. The 
Habsburg Empire’s foothold in East Asia also created opportunities for sailors, 
missionaries, travellers, diplomats and others to travel to East Asia, including 
some individuals from the Slovenian area who brought back numerous objects. 
The range of these objects is considerable, reflecting the type of access enjoyed 
by the individuals in question, their purchasing power, the context in which the 
exchanges took place and also their aesthetic ideals. They are mostly smaller ob-
jects of a commemorative nature and belong to the category of export art that 
was generally available in large East Asian ports. Objects from earlier periods or 
from the inner market are rare.
An exception to this general rule is the collection assembled by the senior naval 
officer Ivan Skušek Jr. Owing to political circumstances, he remained in Beijing 
for almost six years (1914–1920). During this period, he developed a specific aes-
thetic sensitivity for the Chinese heritage and systematically collected relevant 
objects with the intention of setting up a Chinese museum upon his return home. 
His collection contains a number of high-quality objects of reportedly imperial 
provenance. Indeed, in other circumstances, Skušek and his collection could well 
have played a similar role in the institutionalization of Chinese art in Slovenia to 
that of Sir Percival David and his private collection in England, Henri Cernuschi 
and Émile Guimet in France, Ferenc Hopp in Hungary and Charles Lang Fre-
er in the United States, among others. Just as the merchant Nathan Dunn had 
opened the first museum of Chinese objects in the United States in 1838,7 so Ivan 
Skušek also planned to build the first museum of Chinese culture in his home-
land. Like Dunn, Skušek adopted an encyclopaedic approach to collecting8 and 
was keen to reproduce the Chinese heritage by displaying it in a museum. Skušek 
was in fact even more ambitious, since he wanted the museum building to be a 
large-scale construction in the style of traditional Chinese architecture: to that 
end he even brought back a model of a Chinese house (fig. 5). Moreover, he seems 
to have wanted to display the objects set against authentic interiors of the homes 
of the Chinese elite, as suggested by his purchase of decorative walls of the type 
7 For more details of Nathan Dunn’s Museum of Chinese objects, see Conn (2000).
8 The Skušek collection comprises a wide range of objects. In addition to paintings, Buddhist stat-
ues, ceramics, porcelains, textiles, musical instruments, rare books, photographs, albums and many 
other smaller objects of everyday use, there are also larger objects, such as furniture, decorative wall 
screens and a model of a Chinese house.
104 Nataša VAMPELJ SUHADOLNIK: Between Ethnology and Cultural History:...
that embellished Chinese rooms. He also had a special interest in richly carved 
wooden furniture. His acquisition of a three-volume album containing profes-
sional photographs and detailed architectural analysis of the Forbidden City, pub-
lished by Tokyo Imperial University in 1906, further testifies to his interest in 
interior design and architecture. If he had succeeded in constructing a Chinese 
museum in Slovenia based on authentic Chinese architecture and interior design, 
it would have been a truly unique achievement not only in Slovenia but also in 
Europe as a whole.
Figure 5. Roof of the Chinese house model. (Source: Skušek Collection, Slovene Ethnograph-
ic Museum, Ljubljana)
A significant role in classifying East Asian objects as artistic material and in the 
gradual institutionalization of Chinese art in Europe was played by individual 
collectors, whose private interest prompted them to study closely the objects in 
their collections and to ascribe aesthetic values to them. They began to organ-
ize exhibitions and publish magazines, journals, catalogues and monographs. In 
England, this tendency went even further with the foundation of the Oriental 
Ceramic Society in 1921. Through various public activities, this group of collec-
tors and other enthusiasts influenced the thrust and perception of East Asian 
ceramics collection in Great Britain among not only museum professionals and 
the academic community, but also the wider public. Endowed with considerable 
financial means, some of these collectors supported further study and research. In 
particular, thanks to the funding of Sir Percival David, a degree course in Chi-
nese art history was established at the University of London in 1930—the first 
105Asian Studies IX (XXV ), 3 (2021), pp. 85–116
such academic programme in art history in Great Britain (Pierson 2011, 132).9 
An equally significant role was played by Charles Freer and other collectors in the 
United States. By bequeathing his collection to the nation and helping to found 
what is now the Freer Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., the former contribut-
ed greatly to the recognition of Asian material as art in the United States (Conn 
2000). At around the same time, in 1915, the American School of Archaeology 
was established in Beijing with the aim of training people to interpret Eastern art 
in the West and vice versa (Shin 2016, 249). The use of private funds to establish 
such public institutions, which to a certain extent also served as research centres, 
can be observed in France as well.
Ivan Skušek, in contrast, despite his eagerness to establish a museum—he even 
bought a piece of land in a northern district of Ljubljana for that purpose—never 
undertook a systematic and indepth examination of the objects in his collection. 
During his stay in Beijing he had developed a very positive attitude towards Chi-
nese culture and begun to champion Chinese art, but after returning to Slove-
nia his desire to resume service in the navy proved stronger (Skušek n.d.; Čeplak 
Mencin 2012, 115–16). Financial problems put an end to his original plans to 
found a museum. This must also be the reason why he tried to sell certain piec-
es of Chinese furniture from his collection to museums in the United States and 
Europe, as revealed by the drafts of several of Skušek’s letters that are preserved in 
the Slovene Ethnographic Museum.
The re-evaluation of East Asian objects in the Slovenian area on the basis of aes-
thetic criteria was therefore halted or slowed down. To a certain degree, the fo-
cus of such efforts shifted to the domestic environment. For in the following years 
Skušek’s home was frequented by the intellectual and artistic elite of Ljubljana (fig. 
6). It is very likely that in this way Chinese aesthetics left their mark on the work 
of the city’s leading architect, Jože Plečnik (1872–1957), who was a regular visitor 
to Skušek’s flat and was much taken by its ceramic roof statues and garden furni-
ture (Lombergar 2002). Skušek’s wife, the Japanese Marija Skušek (Tsuneko Kondō 
Kawase), whom he had met in Beijing, also played a significant role in transmitting 
East Asian culture to the wider Slovenian public. Owing to the lack of documen-
tation, it is difficult to assess the extent to which she influenced the selection and 
purchase of objects in Beijing, but after settling down in Slovenia she became very 
socially active and was an important mediator between Japanese and Slovenian cul-
ture.10 After her husband’s death in 1947 she took over custody of the collection.
9 For more details of the institutionalization of Chinese art in Great Britain, see Pierson (2011).
10 For more on Marija Skušek and her role in transmitting the knowledge of the Japanese (East 
Asian) culture to Slovenian and Yugoslav audience, see Hrvatin (2021) and Visočnik Gerželj 
(2021).
106 Nataša VAMPELJ SUHADOLNIK: Between Ethnology and Cultural History:...
Figure 6. Ivan Skušek’s flat in Ljubljana. (Source: Photo Archive of the Slovene Ethnographic 
Museum, Ljubljana)
A stronger impetus for the reinterpretation of East Asian objects came from the 
ethnologist Pavla Štrukelj, who was responsible as curator for the Skušek collec-
tion after its transfer from the National to the Ethnographic Museum. She ac-
quainted herself with Western concepts and ideas about non-European cultures, 
as is evident from her citing of foreign experts as references in her work. She 
quickly re cognized the value of individual objects in the collection, particularly 
their (putative) imperial provenance. In her scholarly papers she described some 
as “exquisite” and “high-quality” artefacts, which suggests that she had accord-
ed to them the status of (decorative) art. The institutionalization of Chinese art, 
therefore, continued at least partly within the boundaries of ethnology. In other 
respects, Pavla Štrukelj had taken up Deschmann’s cultural-historical approach 
to the categorization of the collections, though now with a focus on the imperial 
“status” of objects.
To some extents developments in Slovenia must have been also influenced from 
across the Atlantic by Ivan Jager (1871–1959), a Slovenian architect and urban 
107Asian Studies IX (XXV ), 3 (2021), pp. 85–116
planner who settled in the United States after assembling an enviable collection 
during his rather short stay in East Asia in 1901. In contrast to Skušek, Jager ea-
gerly studied Japanese art, architecture and philosophy, which he skilfully used in 
his work after arriving in Minneapolis in 1902. Although he remained in contact 
with some Slovenian fellow architects and artists, and to a certain extent influ-
enced their oeuvre, the great physical distance prevented any major contribution 
by Jager to the reevaluation of East Asian material in Slovenia as “fine art.” He 
bequeathed his collection to the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts, but 
except for a short exhibition of his ukiyo-e  prints in 2005, it has remained largely 
hidden from the public.
In addition to the above-mentioned factors, the absence of an “art discourse” 
should also be understood in the light of the specific situation of the Slovenian 
area. Always on the political periphery—initially within the Habsburg monar-
chy, later as one of the founding nations in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, but with 
little real political or administrative power—in Slovenia the tendency towards 
strengthening provincial and national identity was quite prominent. As pointed 
out by Hudales (2003, 67–68), already at the time of the foundation of the Provin-
cial Museum of Carniola, its mission had been to collect and display everything 
that might serve to extol the history of Carniola, its capital Ljubljana and par-
ticularly the industry of its inhabitants. When looking at the different categories 
applied to Asian objects it is necessary to take this into account. As already men-
tioned, whereas Asian objects brought by missionaries and travellers were classi-
fied as ethnographic, those of local provenance were treated as belonging to the 
realm of cultural history. The possession of exotic Asian objects as a legacy of the 
global phenomenon of chinoiserie testified to Slovenia participating in the broader 
historical, social and cultural development of Europe: they could thus be placed 
together with the “regional” symbols that helped to build provincial and nation-
al identity. In contrast, Asian and other non-European collections assembled by 
missionaries and travellers served to demonstrate Slovenia’s position on the “evo-
lutionary” scale in relation to other peoples. The boundary between the two ap-
proaches was rather vague, which is also reflected in how most objects of Asian 
origin were re-categorized and transferred from the National Museum to the 
newly established Ethnographic Museum.
The striving to consolidate national identity—and, accordingly, to emphasize the 
continuous development of Slovenian/Slavic art and its being part of a wider Eu-
ropean context—manifested itself in January 1920, when the chair for art history 
was established at the University of Ljubljana. Alongside the chair for Sloveni-
an philology and history, the art history professorship was among the first to be 
set up within the newly founded university, whose main concern in those years 
108 Nataša VAMPELJ SUHADOLNIK: Between Ethnology and Cultural History:...
was to strengthen its Slovenian character (Golob 2020, 9). Not surprisingly, giv-
en that the Austro-Hungarian Empire had been dissolved in 1918 and a new 
state—the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes—established, the Slovenian 
national movement was very active culturally and politically. The main goal of the 
Art History Society, founded in Ljubljana in 1921, was similarly “to promote the 
study of art history, particularly in Slovenia, and to make appreciation of art and 
its history more widespread,” as argued by Vojeslav Molè (1886–1973), who to-
gether with Izidor Cankar (1886–1958) and France Stelè (1886–1972) was one 
of the pioneers who helped to establish art history as an academic discipline in 
Slovenia (Molè in Golob 2020, 62). The study of Slovenian and especially South 
Slavic art—including the development of the necessary methodology and termi-
nology, modelled on the Vienna School—was thus situated in the broader con-
text of Western European art. In an extensive monograph on the development 
of the discipline of art history in Slovenia over the past hundred years, Nataša 
Golob (2020) argues that later generations of art historians continued developing 
the thematic, theoretical and methodological framework for their research along 
those lines. The emphasis on (Western) European and Slovene or South Slavic 
fine arts has continued to this day, whereas sensitivity to the aesthetic value of 
East Asian objects has not generally been fostered.
Instead of a Conclusion: The Institutionalization of East Asian Art 
in Slovenia and the “Privilege of Periphery”
The circulation of delicate and exquisite Asian objects in the European market 
led to a reevaluation of the Western aesthetic canon, into which such objects 
were now admitted for the first time. However, preference was given to objects 
from earlier periods, in which Western connoisseurs looked for “primitivist” fea-
tures. They found these in the formal and chromatic simplicity of ceramic vessels 
from the Song dynasty, various pottery figures from the Han and Tang dynas-
ties, grave objects and, particularly, in the graceful lines of Buddhist sculptures 
(Tythacott 2011, 163). In accordance with Western notions of the hierarchy of 
the arts, in which painting (especially oil paintings with figural motifs) was rated 
highest, Chinese and Japanese paintings were admitted into the category of visual 
art, albeit, as Clunas (1997, 423) has shown, into the subcategory of prints and 
drawings. This “canonization” was further encouraged by the institutionalization 
of Chinese (East Asian) art in Europe, with a significant role played in this pro-
cess by private initiative, which to a certain extent helped to shape the collections 
policy of museums.
109Asian Studies IX (XXV ), 3 (2021), pp. 85–116
This process has been slower in Slovenia. In the nineteenth and twentieth centu-
ries, East Asian collections were classified mostly as ethnological material, with 
occasional shifts to cultural history. This can be attributed to three key factors: the 
lack of high-quality artefacts of imperial or archaeological provenance, especially 
in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries; the insufficient financial means of 
private collectors in the interwar period, which prevented further specialization; 
and the orientation of art history as an academic discipline towards an emphasis 
on national identity, with legitimacy conferred by the integration of Slovenia into 
the broader context of Western artistic development. In contrast to the colonial 
history of England and France, where East Asian collections were to some extent 
tokens of national and imperial identity, the political marginalization of the Slo-
venian area led to a tendency to promote national identity and to celebrate folk 
culture. East Asian collections did not play a major role in consolidating Slove-
nian national consciousness: they consequently remained excluded from the eval-
uation of individual objects as artworks and continued to be mostly stored at the 
museum depots.
While the exclusion of such material from the discourse of art history can be 
understood in the light of political events during the twentieth century and the 
strengthening of nationalistic and state-building tendencies, the fact that even 
after the Bologna reforms of higher education in Slovenia in the first decade of 
the  twenty-first century, non-European art was still not included in the syllabus 
of degree courses in art history is noteworthy. It points to the still dominant Eu-
rocentric orientation of art history as an academic discipline in Slovenia. Indeed, 
efforts to institutionalize East Asian art only really got under way in 1995 with 
the introduction of Sinology and Japanology programmes at the newly estab-
lished Department of Asian Studies in the Faculty of Arts of the University of 
Ljubljana.
Some momentum in this process has also come from ethnologists. While Pav-
la Štrukelj revived Deschmann’s cultural history-based approach when studying 
high-quality, valuable artefacts of imperial provenance in the Skušek collection, 
her successor Ralf Čeplak Mencin, also a professional ethnologist, has proposed 
setting up a dedicated museum of Asian and African art. A tendency to treat the 
objects in the Skušek collection as artworks may also be discerned in the way that 
foreign experts in the field of Chinese art have been invited to evaluate the collec-
tion: William Watson from the British Museum was invited to do so in 1962, and 
Yi Hongzhang, a Chinese expert and curator at the Palace Museum in Beijing, in 
1994 (Čeplak Mencin 2012, 114). Thanks to the combined efforts of sinologists 
and ethnologists, the process gained new momentum, leading to the organiza-
tion of the already mentioned exhibition Encounters with China, which opened 
110 Nataša VAMPELJ SUHADOLNIK: Between Ethnology and Cultural History:...
in Ljubljana in 2006 (fig. 8). As noted by Zmago Šmitek (2007, 275), the exhibi-
tion did not limit itself to the past but also raised questions that were relevant to 
contemporary China. A further development in the reinterpretation of Chinese 
objects and their artistic value was stimulated by the accompanying exhibition of 
contemporary art mounted by six graduates of the School of Drawing and Paint-
ing (in the Academy of Fine Arts and Design) under the leadership of the Chi-
nese–Slovenian artist Wang Huiqin. In addition to the Chinese objects presented 
in the main exhibition, the accompanying smaller one explored the interplay of 
Slovenian contemporary art and Chinese visual production.
Figure 7. The exhibition Encounters with China: Traces of Chinese Cultural Heritage in Slovenia 
at the Slovene Ethnographic Museum in 2006. Photo by Marko Habič.
Prior to that, a dual degree programme at the Faculty of Arts had enabled the 
younger generation of students to specialize in Sinology or Japanology and in art 
history, providing them with solid foundations for subsequent work in the pio-
neering field of East Asian art. The first university-level course on Chinese art in 
Slovenia was introduced in 2003 as an optional course within the undergraduate 
programme in Sinology. As part of the Bologna reforms, this optional course was 
111Asian Studies IX (XXV ), 3 (2021), pp. 85–116
transformed into a regular one, and the master’s programme in Sinology was ex-
panded to include a regular course on Chinese art. The latter offered master’s stu-
dents the opportunity to familiarize themselves with museum work by becoming 
involved in the analysis of individual objects of East Asian origin. The establish-
ment of these two new courses was a further step towards the institutionalization 
of Chinese art in Slovenia.
In 2018, a further stimulus came from the Slovenian Research Agency, which 
announced that it would fund a three-year research project on East Asian collec-
tions in Slovenia. The project was intended to situate within the global context the 
history of collections of East Asian objects in Slovenia and their cultural conno-
tations. Overseen by the Department of Asian Studies, the project team compre-
hensively and systematically investigated five collections of East Asian origin for 
the first time. The work was done in cooperation with museum professionals and 
followed an interdisciplinary approach. In addition to individual objects, the way 
they can be interpreted and their connection with the people that produced them, 
the project also addressed aesthetic and formal characteristics. The findings from 
the project have challenged the boundaries between the traditional categories of 
“fine arts”, “anthropology” and “ethnology”, leading to a reassessment of the exist-
ing museum taxonomy in the light of a broader understanding of world cultures 
and our human heritage.
Ivan Skušek himself had already exemplified such a universal approach—not only 
through the encyclopaedic nature of his collection but also with his vision of a 
museum built in traditional Chinese architectural style that would display, say, an 
opium pipe or another everyday object next to a richly carved mirror on a pedestal 
in the form of two lions of supposed imperial provenance, thereby transcending 
traditional divisions between academic disciplines. It is precisely such initiatives 
that can help to facilitate, both in Slovenia and elsewhere in Europe, a reappraisal 
of the material production of the classical “Other”—a process that is reflected, for 
example, in the renaming of ethnographic museums to “museums of world cul-
tures”.11 The national database created as part of the abovementioned project pro-
vides a systematic and analytical overview of all East Asian objects in Slovenia.12 
The database presents this material in digital format as part of the cultural herit-
age at both the national and global level. This is a further step in the reevaluation 
of Asian objects, since it means omitting the selection phase in which it is decided 
11 To give but a few examples: the Wereldmuseum in Rotterdam, the Nationaal Museum van Wereld-
culturen in the Netherlands, the Weltmuseum in Vienna and the Världskulturmuseerna in Sweden. 
For further discussion of the universality and cosmopolitanism of museums, see Fiskesjö (2007).
12 Database of East Asian objects in Slovenian museums is available at the following website: 
vazcollections.si.
112 Nataša VAMPELJ SUHADOLNIK: Between Ethnology and Cultural History:...
whether or not an object is of “better” or “higher” quality and thus belongs to the 
realm of the decorative or fine arts.
In this sense, the fact that the Slovenian area was historically on the political 
periphery—a status that continued in the new countries established particularly 
after World War I—can be seen as an advantage. Being a small country without 
a colonial past does not necessarily imply a “privileged epistemological point of 
view”, as Bojan Baskar (2015, 75) has argued and as may be seen in the classifi-
cation of non-European material as “ethnology” in Slovenia. Nevertheless, Slove-
nia’s specific circumstances did make it possible to present the East Asian mate-
rial in the country’s museums using a more systematic and universal approach. It 
is these very circumstances that have raised awareness of the need to undertake, 
through the above-mentioned project, a comprehensive review of collecting cul-
ture and the perception of such objects in Slovenia—something that has not gen-
erally been done at the national level for most countries, though specific collect-
ing practices have been studied at the local level. Above all, Slovenia’s peripheral 
position has facilitated appreciation of these objects as being part of the universal 
heritage of human culture. Such an appreciation is particularly strong in the pe-
ripheral areas of former European empires, where the systematic investigation 
of national and local museums and private collections has started only recently.13
The “privilege of periphery” further manifested itself in the initiative to set up a 
global association of experts in Asian art, which was prompted by the lack of op-
portunities in Slovenia for direct contacts and discussions with international col-
leagues that would facilitate the exchange of ideas. The European Association for 
Asian Art and Archaeology (EAAA), the first international academic society of 
this kind in the world, was duly founded in Ljubljana in 2013. By 2020 it already 
had almost 300 members.
The institutionalization of East Asian art in Slovenia, which took place mainly in 
the first two decades of the twenty-first century, was made possible by a number of 
historical, socio-political and cultural factors that were specific to the peripheral 
situation of the Slovenian area in earlier historical periods. These factors created a 
favourable atmosphere for the reevaluation of Asian art from a broader perspec-
tive, transcending existing conceptual boundaries. Important new developments 
may therefore often originate from the periphery, rather than from the core.
13 Similar initiatives are under way in Switzerland, led by the University of Zurich (Thomsen 2015), 
and in Scotland, under the auspices of National Museums Scotland (n.d.).
113Asian Studies IX (XXV ), 3 (2021), pp. 85–116
Acknowledgements
The research for this paper was carried out under both the project East Asian Col-
lections in Slovenia: Inclusion of Slovenia in the Global Exchanges of Objects and Ide-
as with East Asia (2018–2021) (no. J7-9429) and the core research funding pro-
gramme Asian Languages and Cultures (no. P6-0243), both of which are funded by 
the Slovenian Research Agency. I am very grateful to the Slovene Ethnographic 
Museum, the National Museum Slovenia and Janez Lombergar for permission 
to publish images. I am also very grateful to two anonymous reviewers for their 
helpful comments and to Luis Sundkvist for a thorough reading of the text and 
polishing the English.
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