Colleagues:

Congratulations to the ICOM Yugoslavia National Committee which,
despite the severe restrictions on travel etc., has managed to
mark International Museums Day with simultaneous meetings in Belgrade and
Novi Sad.

They are also maintaining an ICOM Yugoslavia web site which details
war damage to those museums to which professional access is possible, and
related war damage to architectural monuments etc.

The address is: http://mediateka.f.bg.ac.yu/icomyu/  (Note that the
address misses out the "www" at the beginning.

Extensive blast damage to the following four museums has been reported so
far (though the collections are apparently mainly intact so far):

Belgrade: Museum of Modern Art

Nis: Red Cross Memorial Museum - at the former World War II Concentration
     Camp

Novi Sad: Museum of Vojvodina

Leskovac: National Museum

Several important historic centres of smaller towns, especially in Kosovo,
have been very extensively damaged, and it is possible that smaller local
and community museums in these areas may have been damaged or destroyed as
well, though there has been no professional communication with these for
some time.

(Judging by the photographs, on the basis of what is known at present the
former concentration camp museum at Nis seems to have suffered the worst
structural damage, though the repairs etc. elsewhere may be more costly -
especially the modernist style Vojvodina Museum near the Danube bridge at
Novi Sad which has lost around 500 square metres of outside glass walls
and a further 300 sq. metres of windows etc.)

The national monuments service is managing to maintain some level of
inspection or recording of the 4,000+ nationally protected historic
buildings and sites across Yugoslavia, in cooperation with Orthodox
Church authorities and sources in the case of religious buildings and
zones, and gives details of the extensive damage to cultural monuments
and other historic building's and sites on its official web site:

http://www.yuheritage.com

The International Committee of the Blue Shield (ICBS - the standing joint
emergency preparedness and response committee of the UNESCO Category A
non-governmental organisations for archives (ICA), libraries (IFLA),
monuments and sites (ICOMOS) and museums (ICOM) has been is session in
The Hague during the past two days, and is preparing a further public
statement on the present dangerous situation.  This will be a follow-up to
that issued on 19 April (since when the rate and scale of "collateral"
damage to culture in the bombing campaign seems to have increased
significantly - reflecting the marked increase in the range of types of
targets - not just the increased intensity of the bombing.

The BBC World Service is running a substantial feature on the cultural
damage in Yugoslavia in its "Meridian" arts programme that goes out for
the first time at 23.30h. Central European Time tonight (18 May), and
linked to both Museums Day and the signing last night in The Hague of the
new 2nd Protocol, intended to greatly strengthen the application and
effectiveness of the 1954 Hague Convention, including an interview with
me recorded this afternoon on the reports of damage and destruction of
cultural property in the NATO air campaign and both the existing and
proposed new international law intended to prevent this.

Patrick Boylan


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