Over her twenty three years at the Historical Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Elma Hašimbegović, director for the past eleven, has turned the museum from an institution on the brink of closure and disregard to a venue for dialogue and a tribute to human resilience and adaptability. 

Since 1963, the museum — now a state institution that doesn’t receive any state funding — has been located in a modernist building whose sharp edges withstood the 1,425 day siege of Sarajevo and after 1995, state neglect. Upon entering the building, a visitor is met with a stained glass mural reading “Smrt fašizmu, Sloboda narodu” (Death to fascism, Freedom to the people). The slogan calls back to the museum’s past as a Yugoslav institution commemorating the “just battle of all peoples of Bosnia and Herzegovina and Yugoslavia against fascism.” 

Originally founded in 1945 as the Historical Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the museum was renamed as the Museum of National Revolution of Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1949 before again being renamed in 1967, this time to the Museum of the Revolution of Bosnia and Herzegovina. It ultimately came into its current name in 1993, a year after Bosnia and Herzegovina’s independence referendum and amid the siege of Sarajevo. 

Hašimbegović’s office is deeper in the building, past the mural. Her door has “DIREKTOR” affixed to it in solid, silver block letters, followed by a slip of paper with “ICA” written in black block letters to create the female version of the title. The DIREKTOR lettering was put up when the offices were originally furnished and it wouldn’t have been considered that a woman would hold the office. 

Years later, someone — Hašimbegović does not know who — took matters into their own hands, adding a slip of paper with “ICA” written in black letters, to form the female version of the word. The door is emblematic of some of the changes undergone by the Historical Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina since it moved to its current building in 1963 after previous stops on the premises of the National Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina and Sarajevo City Hall.  

Since its reincarnation as the national history museum of an independent Bosnia and Hezegovinian state, the museum has navigated abandonment by the state, the public presentation of recent and contested history and an unsupportive political environment. Nonetheless, it continues to serve as a forum for reflection and critical engagement with the past, telling stories of human resilience in extreme circumstances, such as the siege of Sarajevo and magnifying humanity in the face of strong nationalist narratives amplified by Bosnia and Herzegovina’s political structure.  

K2.0 caught up with Hašimbegović after her recent trip to the Imperial War Museum in London to discuss the DIREKTOR(ICA) sign, her experiences leading a state institution that receives no state funding, and the privileges and responsibilities of curating history. 

K2.0: Do you know the history of the DIREKTOR lettering? When was it initially put up, and what’s the background of the ICA addition? 

Elma Hašimbegović: This small inscription on the door says a lot about this institution’s past and present. When you enter the museum, you see many things preserved and frozen in time, including the director’s office and the inscription on the door. This space was probably built in the 1960s. The furniture has not changed in many years. 

The inscription tells you about how gender correctness was not present at that time. All these professions, especially directors, were mostly male professions. “Director’s office” would be written in the male form and nobody paid attention to it. Now, it’s a historical sign. Probably, one of my colleagues or a museum guest — I don’t even remember who it was — was bothered by the inscription, and made this edit. We could change the full inscription and write a new one properly. But I think this intervention keeps history as it was while adding to it in an artistic way. 

We’ve opened the museum up to new interventions, letting some researchers and primarily artists intervene with our collections. This is an example of that. It was a direct intervention to the furniture and the museum’s history. We can see it as an art installation or an artistic intervention in space. 

Seeing it really struck me and so I was curious about the backstory.

It was made as a joke, but you can see it as a protest. There have not been many female directors in the museum’s history. 

That being said, museums and some other cultural institutions are beyond the interest of big male business types. Nowadays in Bosnia, museums have women as directors. I have a colleague at the Museum of Literature and Performing Arts. These positions as directors in less paid institutions are more occupied by female directors. Business is still reserved for men.

Over the course of your career, have you noticed an increase in female directors/Direktoricas? 

Art, culture — businesses and industries that don’t have much funding and money — can be given to women nowadays. I see this change in creative industries, but business-related institutions are still reserved for men. Culture has been seen as something that men are not as interested in. 

You grew up in Sarajevo. Do you remember your first visit to the Museum? 

I only have vague memories of coming to this particular museum as a child. It was the Museum of the Revolution then. It was a strong political institution with a lot of military history that was probably more interesting for and has been better kept in the memories of boys and male visitors.

I remember our neighbors, the National Museum — Zemaljski Muzej — much more during childhood. We as children from the neighborhood decided to visit the museum one day and so 10 of us went. The National Museum was more colorful and had things like animals that were more interesting to younger generations. 

Maybe two or three years before I started working at the Historical Museum, I came to one of the exhibitions. I never dreamed of starting a long career here, but I remember that I could imagine myself working at a museum. I always thought it was beautiful work.

So even if you didn’t see yourself specifically at this museum, the idea of working in a museum was appealing? 

For sure. I knew when I was quite little that I would study history because history was my favorite subject. Museums were always places where I could imagine an interesting and dynamic job interacting with collections and connecting with history. One thinks of a museum as having a particular atmosphere, ambience, as being quite beautiful in its essence. But it was nothing like that when I came to work here. 

You did your Master’s degree at Central European University (CEU) in Hungary. Did you always plan to return to Bosnia and Herzegovina, or did you anticipate working abroad? 

I knew I would return. I had the opportunity to study abroad at the same time as I got a job at the museum. I was lucky to have the director’s permission to leave and then return to the job. 

Medieval studies was my academic pursuit, but the idea of studying abroad and going beyond my local community and local education was much more important than doing medieval studies. I was driven by my desire to study in a different environment, away from the comfort zone of home.

In 2015, The New York Times wrote that “The museum owes its resilience to the superhuman efforts of its eternally optimistic director, Elma Hašimbegović.” Where does this optimism stem from?   

Well, it’s over eight years later and I still haven’t lost that enthusiasm. I came to the museum in 2001, so I’ve worked for the museum for over 20 years now. We all have our ups and downs, but I have quite a strong vision and mission. This is what keeps me going, even when I see society giving up and that the generation that started reconstructing society after the war is tired. That generation is a bit older than me. My generation is of the post-war period of changes and building a new society. 

After the war, people had much more optimism and enthusiasm about changing things in a post-war society. Especially when I saw the dysfunctional economy, I saw potential in arts and culture as carriers of change and bringing a healthy climate to the society and city I grew up in. 

When I came to the museum, it was already in crisis. This crisis began at the museum and other cultural institutions immediately in 1995. No one came and said, “we take responsibility for the institution.” I came six years later, in 2001. No one funded it. You see the building deteriorating, collections in danger. You see humiliation of culture and heritage at every step.

I told you about dreams of working at a museum. It was a profound position; I saw it as a very beautiful and unique job. And then I came to the museum, which was all but dead. We talk about history being neglected and erased from public memory. I somehow found myself in a position to see it. I saw a vulnerable institution that was not recognized or acknowledged by society for all its potential and capacity and value. 

It’s incredible that the museum is in this beautiful modernist building from the 1960s. The building is falling apart and nobody cares. We have unique and beautiful and important collections and nobody cares. The museum could fall apart or be destroyed or demolished by time passing. Some kind of really internal energy, or power or force drives me to say that this cannot be the case. 

We managed to save the institution from closing. With the museum’s heritage and legacy as a former Museum of Revolution, a museum dealing with World War II history established in communist period, it’s already problematic. 15 years ago, nobody valued the building. It was just an old socialist building. I could easily imagine it being demolished one day and the place being used for a new shopping center. 

This was possible then; everything is possible. Even things that nowadays sound impossible can easily happen because reality is cruel and unpredictable. 

I worked as a curator until 2013, when I took over as Director. In 12 years as a curator, I had much less capacity to do anything. You want to do your job properly, but your hands are tied. You don’t have funding or management support. You don’t have understanding from those working around you. 

I got in a position to implement my visions and ideas of how the museum should look. This is the enthusiasm and optimism that keeps me going. I see the effort and energy invested paying off. One project leads to another, and you see the step by step process of change. It’s a sense of “yes, we can do it.”

The idea that you are saving something is not religious, but you do have some kind of driving force forward. You have the ability and some means and tools to do something, so you use these resources as much as possible to keep the institution running and distinct from everything surrounding us. 

You have a divided society, divided politics. We have divided views on history. So we are really trying to provide something different from what has been going on around us, which has been getting worse and worse by time passing. Not better, unfortunately, but much worse. Things on many terms are not improving but going the other direction.

So that’s where the optimism and enthusiasm comes from. Small results lead you to more. This is a driving force that keeps me moving and enthusiastic. I believe in what we are doing. 

When you talk to people about the political, economic and cultural situation in Bosnia, people are disappointed and manage, because they are realistic, to make you quite depressed. I talk to colleagues in similar institutions, such as the National Gallery. You see people not getting funding and not getting salaries and who don’t have any optimism. Then you think, “am I too naive, or am I wrong?” But I don’t see any other option, honestly. 

I’m curious about how you balance leading a museum focused on cultivating the humanities, making public history accessible and understandable to today’s society, with the financial and institutional challenges baked into the country’s current institutional framework. 

These two things are linked. Our financial challenges and obstacles are motivators. Maybe if we had regular financing, the motivation would not be the same. It’s difficult to motivate people to fight more, to work more, if you have secured everything. 

Sometimes I say it’s trouble or a need that drives people to change things. I don’t want to say that poverty is the most beneficial environment for creativity, because it would be wrong to talk and think from that perspective, but I think that our motivation came from the challenges. Our motivation was to change our position and to change the societal climate. 

Our museum alone cannot change the world or society. But our inspiration and motivation is to serve the public and be a public good. I’m responsible for the museum, but it’s not my private property. It’s a public good. It belongs to everyone, not only physically, as in collections and the building, but in terms of heritage. 

This was our starting point when we approached the public seeking community support. This is not mine because I work here. It is not exclusively my responsibility and burden, just because I’m engaged with or am responsible for it. It belongs to the whole society. I really believe in the idea of a community museum and heritage and history belonging to everyone, including this building. So I say “please come and feel the space. Please feel as if you are at home here, that you’re in a safe zone for whatever you want to do as an artist, a visitor, a young person.” 

We promote the museum as a place that belongs to everyone. The heritage we care for is a public good in a society where there are fewer and fewer public spaces and public goods. We would not be in the same position if we did not have these financial and political problems. If we were organized and funded as an administratively and politically arranged institution, we would not really think of progress or our mission. Instead, we are people who based on need are forced and motivated to think of progress and change and have the mission in our core. 

For every project we do, we think from the same position: “What is the museum’s mission? What do we want to achieve? What is the message we want to communicate?”

Do you have any particular favorite artifacts in the museum? Is there anything from the archive that you hope could someday be the basis for a bigger project, or anything else like this?

It is very difficult to think of a favorite artifact. We collect history here; this is the beauty and privilege of the work.

When someone brings in an artifact because he or she thinks it belongs in the museum, I normally take the first step of adding it to the collection. It is a privilege to follow the artifact from when it enters the museum building. I know who brings it in. He or she shares a story with me or with colleagues. The story, and the emotion with which it is told are all part of the history — it’s not just a physical object.

Sometimes, the person is still not ready to physically disconnect with an artifact and give it to the museum. They are not ready to share something of such emotional value. We are witnesses of these processes. I will not be able to communicate where the object will end up, which collection it will ultimately be in. Maybe we will use it one day and tell a completely different historical story around it. 

Rather than explaining particular objects, I can tell a story about the ‘Don’t Let Them Kill Us’ banner that we managed to bring into our collection after 20 years. The original banner from this beauty contest. [This large banner, which reads “Don’t Let Them Kill Us,” was held up on stage by contestants of the Miss Besieged Sarajevo beauty pageant, held in 1993]. 

Wow, the original!

We knew where it was, but the person had not been ready to share it with us for the past 25 years. It was in the basement of someone who had a very emotional link with it. They weren’t ready to give it away. In these emotional negotiations, I can’t offer anything of financial value. Maybe [the banner] has some [financial] value, but it has more emotional value than market value.

There are some that can be valued in money. But for some of the small objects the museum collects, all these creative handmade objects showing human resilience during the siege, I don’t know what their price would be. We are talking about emotional value here. 

Something else I find interesting is a letter written by Miljenko Cvitković, a Yugoslav volunteer in the Spanish Civil War. He went to Spain and then returned to Yugoslavia, joined the partisans at the beginning of the war in Yugoslavia and was killed. We have a letter from him to his love. Writing from Paris, he explains the reasons for why he joined, why he’s going to Spain, why he has to do it because everyone has to do it, giving his personal reasons in a very personal letter, but there’s a whole history beyond that. 

This is one part of our collection which never found a place to be on display. I’m always looking for an opportunity to use it. It’s an emotional link for me, not just because I’m reading someone’s love letter. My personal connection is that the street I grew up on is named after Miljenko Cvitković, but I didn’t really know who he was. 

It’s not a cute and sweet story; it’s the real history of a real historical figure beyond local events. We are talking about internationals joining international brigades in Spain responding to fascism’s rise. It’s much more than a love letter. 

Our job at the museum is to contextualize such things for the audience. But it’s also our job to ask questions of solidarity, motivations, resistance, fascism, anti-fascism. There are many levels to be seen through such artifacts and objects. There is beauty and privilege in following the process of collecting and preserving history. You are responsible as a museum person, as a curator. 

How do you decide what is or is not important? We address a very general audience and want to explain to them what the siege of Sarajevo was. Reading this in a book is one thing; showing it in an exhibition is another. Plus, having all these obstacles and sensitivities around the topics we deal with is a great responsibility. And again, the motivation and enduring optimism and enthusiasm partly come from that. 

Are there other museums in Sarajevo, elsewhere in Bosnia and Herzegovina, or abroad, that you see as a model for what a museum can be to a community? Are there any other museums that you draw inspiration from? 

No [laughs]. I don’t enter museums as a pure visitor any longer. That’s the disadvantage of this work. You enter a museum and see how the reception desk is set up, what kind of programs they have. You’re immediately trying to see things you can learn from. 

We are related to museums that engage with conflicts, wars, World War II, the Holocaust. These are our partners in many projects, museums we try to learn from because we are not a gallery of flowers and beautiful artwork. We are a museum dealing with very sensitive and serious issues in a vulnerable and poisoned society, where each wrong move can spark problems or misunderstandings and do a lot of damage.

It’s quite difficult to look for that in museums elsewhere. We can see how other museums deal with World War II history. We can see how they deal with the Holocaust. But we deal with a much more contemporary conflict. 

We engage with history that is not yet history. This is one of the challenges in which we cannot learn a lot from other museums. I can learn to put up a nice showcase from other museums, or some scenography. But the things we need, we cannot learn as much as we can, in fact, offer. 

We could be a model for Ukraine or other societies approaching a post-war period. We can offer a lot on dealing with sensitive history. 

When I was in London, I saw that the Imperial War Museum did something on the Troubles and Northern Ireland for the first time. Can you imagine that a museum covering war and conflict — its name is the Imperial War Museum — hasn’t tackled the Troubles? 

The museum deals with wars Britain was involved in. They show weaponry from World War II. They are proud of showing gliders from World War I, but they hadn’t tackled the Troubles, an almost contemporary conflict. On the other hand, we started doing history of the siege seven years after the war ended, in a very sensitive environment where every wrong word can be really problematic.

Young people are already poisoned by politics and nationalism and indoctrinated through education. They don’t have opportunities to learn anything else. I don’t say that the museum can make all these corrections, but it can at least try.

We draw a lot of energy and inspiration from the siege as we deal with the situation, as we lack a lot of resources. We try to be creative in using all the resources we have when dealing with daily obstacles in the museum’s work.

People from World War II were not ready and would never think of the Holocaust’s scale. People in Sarajevo would never in their worst dreams say that the siege would happen, that it would last for four years and that they would have to change their lives completely.

When we talk about the siege of Sarajevo, we talk about human creativity in unusual circumstances. Grenades aren’t required to have unusual circumstances. We had COVID-19 three years ago. The world changed in a second, and we had to learn new skills and new activities. So the [siege of Sarajevo] exhibition is more about universal values and questions than how to make a gun out of nothing. We are not promoting war, but really trying to promote peace and humanity, the idea that humanity can endure a lot without being prepared for it. 

This article has been edited for length and clarity. The conversation was conducted in English.

Feature Image: Nicholas Kulawiak / K2.0.

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