About the museum:
In the centre of Vela Luka, alongside the Parish Church of St Joseph, housed in a one-time school building of the second half of the 19th century, is the Culture Centre. This centre includes a gallery in which exhibitions of renowned domestic and foreign artists are regularly held. The Culture Centre keeps, presents and studies the archaeological collection called Vela spila [Big Cave] and the International Gift Collection of drawings, graphics and small-scale sculpture. The archaeological site Vela spila is above Kale Bay and is one of the most important prehistoric sites on the Adriatic. In the 7.5 m thick sediments a continuity of settlement from the peak of the last Ice Age to the most recent period has been established. With the quantity, importance, diversity and richness of decorative motifs of the finds, Vela spila is one of the points of departure for contemporary European civilisation. The International Gift Collection of drawings, prints and small-scale sculpture was collected by the Vela Luka artist, the sculptor Ante Marinović, after the tidal wave of June 21, 1978 had hit Vela Luka and inflicted enormous material damage on it. The collection consists of many domestic (Edo Murtić, Branko Ružić, Ivan Picelj, Željko Jerman and others) and foreign artists (Erró, J.R. Soto, Bengt Lindstrom, Dado, Tadeusz Kantor and others) while the collection is dominated by two sculptures by Henry Moore. The atrium of the Culture Centre shows ten mosaics of abstract and figural compositions created in 1968 when the first International Meeting of Fine Artists was held in Vela Luka, after which the town became the permanent owner of some seventy mosaics. Particularly prominent in the atrium is an octopus-motif mosaic by Ferdinand Kulmer, a mosaic of Joko Knežević, Jacques Busse and others. The atrium also holds a kinetic sculpture of chromed steel by American artist Jeffery Laudenslager, who gifted the work to the collection in 2006.
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