1 July 2010 | An exhibition, titled “Serbia: Cultural Bridge between East and West,” opened in Vienna’s Dommuseum on Wednesday. It gives an overview of the development of Serbian culture and heritage from the tenth century until today.

The exhibition presents Serbia as a bridge connecting the eastern and western parts of the world. “During a period that lasted for many centuries and under the influence of Byzantium, Turkey, Russia and countries of Central and Western Europe, a specific culture originated representing the bond between the East and the West,” according to the museum’s presentation. “This culture, however, does not represent a mere combination of the different foreign traditions, but a new culture of great spiritual value as recognized specially through Serbian Orthodoxy (Svetosavlje), the Serbian architectural style, an unique Serbian Cyrillic alphabet, rich literature, a distinctive philosophy of life within which elements of eastern collectivism and western individualism interlace, a rich history of endowments, significant contribution to science and fine arts.”

Five separate eras are represented in five of the museum’s rooms: Serbian medieval art from the tenth to the fifteenth centuries; Serbian art from the sixteenth to the seventeenth centuries; Serbian art in the eighteenth century; Serbian art in the nineteenth century; and Serbian cultural heritage at the crossroads between the twentieth and the twenty-first centuries.

In addition to multimedia preservations, the exhibition displays artefacts of great historical and artistic value from the permanent collections of the National Museum in Belgrade, the Matica Srpska Gallery in Novi Sad, the Matica Srpska Library in Novi Sad, the Gallery of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts in Belgrade, the Serbian Orthodox Church Museum in Belgrade, the Belgrade City Museum and the Serbian Historical Museum.

The exhibition also presents renowned personalities from Serbian history that have given a significant contribution to humanity in the fields of culture and science, including: Mihailo Pupin - world renowned scientist and professor at Columbia University in New York; Nikola Tesla - one of the most deserving inventors in the field of electrical engineering in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; Milutin Milanković - founder of theory of cyclical climatic changes; and Ivo Andrić - Noble Laureate for literature in 1961.

The exhibition will be on display in the Dommuseum until October 30. It is organised in cooperation with Matica Srpska, the oldest cultural and scientific institution of Serbia, as a collaboration of the ecumenical foundation Pro Oriente under the patronage of the President of the Republic of Serbia Boris Tadić, and the President of the Republic of Austria Heinz Fischer, on the occasion of the 150th anniversary of the establishment of the St. Sava Serbian Orthodox Municipality in Vienna.

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