Links Between Conservation and Museology - Overview of the Linkages and achievements in the Republic of Slovenia

The tradition of organized protection of cultural heritage has lasted for a century and a half in the territory of today’s Slovenia. The first laws, as well as in other republics of the former common state, were issued at the end of World War II and since then significant activity in this field began to develop. The first bill on the level of the Republic was passed in 1948, followed by the laws in 1961, 1981, 1999 and the last, which was passed in 2008. The law of 1981 linked the activities in the fields of natural heritage, archives and libraries for the first time, but in the nineties of the previous century these links were mostly weakened. Legislation was also the basis for connecting the protection of cultural heritage with museological activities that have been realized in different forms of cooperative partnership, both on the research level and with the overall presentation of cultural heritage. We have witnessed a large number of restorations of architectural heritage with ambient museum exhibitions and a series of successful conservations action that linked the future purpose of the renewed building with the museum, gallery and, indirectly, teaching activities. While performing successful interventions aimed at protecting cultural heritage, institutional guardians of cultural heritage encounter a spontaneous trend of haphazard modernization of important historical buildings, which typically leads to a reduced awareness of the need for protection of cultural heritage and changes the positive attitude towards it.