
Exhibition "Knight in Life and Science" (125 years since the birth of Hristo Vakarelski)
The prestigious Herder Prize of the first Bulgarian to be awarded this high distinction is a central exhibit in the exhibition "Knight in Life and Science", which you can view at the National History Museum.
The exposition is organized on the occasion of the 125th anniversary of the birth of the great Bulgarian ethnographer and folklorist Hristo Vakarelski (1896 – 1979), who received the award in 1965, presented to him at a special ceremony at the University of Vienna.
The exhibition "Knight in Life and Science" includes documents, photos, orders, medals, books and paintings, personal belongings of Hristo Vakarelski, many of which are being shown for the first time. This is a representative part of the large donation made to the National History Museum in 1996 by his son Toma Vakarelski and the scientist's daughter Donka Vakarelska-Chobanska.
The exhibition traces the creative laboratory of Hristo Vakarelski - the path he took to become an ethnographer. He did not dream of becoming one, he wanted to deal with the history of literature, but a specialization in Poland inspired him to start dealing with ethnography. Then he devoted himself to this science and studied spiritual and material culture, which until then no ethnographer had done so comprehensively.
The exposition reflects Hristo Vakarelski's multifaceted and extremely fruitful activity in the field of ethnography and folklore, his field and scientific studies, his high international recognition, his merits as a museum worker and director of the Ethnographic Museum in Skopje and the National Ethnographic Museum in Sofia. His contribution to the creation of the Association of Masters, his wide contacts with world-renowned foreign scientists and Bulgarian colleagues, with whom he maintains an extensive and long-standing correspondence, often providing them with selfless and invaluable help in the field of ethnography. That is why the writer Nikolay Haitov calls him "a knight in life and science".
Visitors will be able to follow his path to and through ethnography, get to know his family environment. The exhibition is realized with the partnership of the Institute of Ethnology and Folkloristics with the Ethnographic Museum at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences.