[restitution matters]

Skušek Collection of precious Chinese belongings in the Ethnographic Museum of Ljublijana

The fact that cultural possessions, which were brought from China at the beginning of the twentieth century, are spread throughout Europe and the US is proven by the Skušek Collection in the Ethnographic Museum of Ljublijana. Ivan Skušek had served in the Austro-Hungarian navy and was in a Chinese prison from 1917-1920, had several dozens of boxes filled Chinese art objects. The circumstances under which he had acquired such a mass of Chinese art are not yet completely clear.

14_Begtse – God of War

Since April 2025, the museum has been running the project Immersive Experience, with three goals:

to digitise and document the Slovene Ethnographic Museum’s Skušek collection using digital technology, which allows for the creation of precise digital 3D models. This in combination with manual, more conventional documentation methods, such as sketches, annotated drawings, photographs and videos as well as descriptive texts will build the baseline of our digitisation effort.
the reconstruction of the collection’s early history and the motivations of the Skušeks, both Ivan’s and Tsuneko’s. Unterstanding the broader picture will be paramount for gaining a better understanding of their selection process when displaying, exhibiting but also using such wide variety of objects and art pieces as part of their everyday life.
to use digital technology to develop new means of presenting our research findings. The virtual exhibition space thereby becomes a spatial field of experience which reaches beyond the pure digitisation of forms and is at the core of our dissemination strategy.