About the museum:
The museum was built according to a project by the Randić-Turato architectural office. It was envisaged as an interpolation of a new building called Two Black Boxes and a Park into the old historical town centre. It was opened in late 2006.
The museum's permanent collection comprises architectural monuments (thresholds, lintels, transennae, crests and other artefacts) and elements of church furnishings (altar slabs, ciborium parts, pilasters and capitals) from the 1st to the 18th centuries AD.
A group of early medieval monuments, architectural ornaments, and church furnishings from a nearby cathedral form the very core and the most important part of the collection of stone monuments. The remains of the ciborium of Bishop Maurice (8th century AD) from the cathedral’s former baptistery hold a particular place among the exhibited items. The ciborium’s remains are displayed in such a way as to recreate their original position in the baptistery area. Four plutei from the baptistery represent rare, perhaps unique, examples of such craftsmanship in Europe.
The great importance of the collection was demonstrated in the exhibition entitled The Croats and the Carolings, which displayed the most representative stone monuments from Novigrad – the ciborium and the plutei. The exhibition was held in Split in 2000 as a part of the international project Charles the Great – The Making of Europe.
Apart from the items of the permanent exhibition, which are part of the Lapidarium Collection, the museum also houses the Cultural and Historical Collection and the Rigo Gallery Collection.
Rigo Gallery
The museum's Rigo Gallery is located on the ground floor of the eponymous Baroque palace in the old town centre, near the museum and the main town square. Opened in 1995, the gallery hosts exhibitions of works by internationally and nationally renowned modern and contemporary artists (Knifer, L. Fontana, G. Trbuljak, J. Albers, M. Bill, D. Martinis, A. Warhol, I. Kožarić, I. Franke, P. Dabac, A. Kulunčić, A. Srnec and others), as well as the works of notable young artists. The gallery also organises a variety of artistic, cultural and sociological projects.
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