About Petra
Petra has worked as a lecturer, artist, designer, writer, curator and editor, and she is currently director of Radovljica Municipal Museums.
She was an assistant professor at the Faculty of Design in Slovenia, where she was in charge of the Department of Product Design and worked as Vice Dean for Creative Activity.
Petra’s educational background is in architecture (Faculty of Architecture, Ljubljana), jewellery (Master of Art at London Metropolitan University) and the humanities (PhD in Philosophy and Theory of Visual Culture at the Faculty of Humanities Koper-Capodistria, University of Primorska). She completed the school for curators The World of Art, School for Curatorial Practices and Critical Writing and acquired the professional title of curator at the Ministry of Culture.
She has exhibited at more than 100 exhibitions, including in Italy, Austria, Germany, Netherlands, Denmark, United Kingdom, Spain, Croatia, Serbia and Columbia.
She has also participated in the organization of several projects, such as BREAK 21, BIO 19, GIDE, Group for International Design Education, several round tables on contemporary jewellery, design management … within the Bilateral Focus and Bilateral DOS exhibitions.
She was the founder and president of the Slovenian Association for Contemporary Jewellery (2003–2015) and since 2013 has been president of the Section for Unique Design of the Designers Society of Slovenia (DOS).
In the field of academic research, she has participated in numerous international conferences, been co-editor of several publications, and a mentor of first and second degree dissertations in design.
Her doctoral thesis is on jewellery as art, investigating different artistic theories, and philosophical and sociological aspects of art jewellery. She is the author of the book Jewellery as Art, which is a short reflection on artistic jewellery as well as many other articles about jewellery, art and design.
Petra became a beekeeper and a member of the Slovenian Beekeepers ‘Association in 2020, when she fell in love with bees. She is the curator and author of the new permanent exhibition at the Museum of Apiculture and the beautiful book Living Together. About Bees and Mankind.
Petra is currently Director of the Radovljica Municipality Museums, where she is responsible for the operation of five museum units:
MUSEUM OF APICULTURE
Since opening in 1959, this museum has specialised in maintaining the heritage of Slovenian beekeeping by keeping records, collecting, storing, documenting, representing and popularising this tradition. The museum’s exhibits represent the three key topics that mark Slovenian beekeeping: the indigenous subspecies bee, world renowned beekeepers and painted beehive panels.
MUNICIPAL MUSEUM OF RADOVLJICA
The baroque mansion, situated in Radovljica’s old town centre in Linhart Square, is home to the Municipal Museum of Radovljica. During the 18th century, a time of great intellectual, political and social change in Europe, one of the most famous Slovenes, Anton Tomaž Linhart (1756–1795), an intellectual and Slovenian representative of modern Slovene historiography and a high state official, was born in Radovljica. The exhibition ‘ANTON TOMAŽ LINHART (1756–1795: Now I am thinking about how to become famous’ is dedicated to him.
ŠIVEC HOUSE ART GALLERY
Šivec House, a town house dating from the mid-16th century, is set in the historic centre of Radovljica. It is classified as one of a group of important cultural monuments of late Gothic architecture, with a rich exterior and interior. Today, the building with its extraordinary ambience serves as an art gallery which presents contemporary Slovene art.
IRON FORGING MUSEUM
The museum is located in the central part of the old square of Kropa and it was opened in 1952 as the first technical museum in Slovenia. It shows the technical and historical development of iron working from ore to nail, as well as the economic, social and cultural conditions in Kropa and nearby ironworking locations since the 15th century until the decline of the ironworks in the 19th century, and the manufacture of handmade nails in the 20th century.
MUSEUM OF HOSTAGES
There are a number of sacred places in Slovenia that are reminders of the people’s suffering during the Second World War. Begunje na Gorenjskem is an idyllic village, located seven kilometres north of Radovljica, beneath Mount Begunjščica. The mighty Katzenstein Mansion in the middle of the settlement served as a Gestapo prison during the time of the Nazi occupation. In the years from 1941 to 1945, a total of 11,477 prisoners were interned, mostly followers of the resistance movement from Gorenjska, as well as from other Slovenian regions.