A study exhibition dedicated to the life and work of the great Serbian writer was organized by the Belgrade City Library on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of Isidore Sekulić’s death. In addition to extensive materials collected from the Manuscript Department of Matica Srpska, the University Library “Svetozar Marković”, SASA Archives, the National Library of Serbia and the Manuscript Department of the Belgrade City Library, visitors could also hear the voice of Isidore Sekulić, whose recording was borrowed from the Radio Belgrade Archive. 
 

Through the life of the first woman member of the Serbian Royal Academy and Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts, the first president of the Writers’ Association of Serbia, founder, honorary president and secretary of the Serbian PEN, honorary member of the Serbian Literary Association, Matica Srpska, a contributor to 33 newspapers and magazines, we are guided by an abundance of documents, letters, postcard, manuscript, book.

As a special exhibition segment, photos from Isidora’s camera, which she took during her stay in Montenegro, preparing to write a publication about Njegoš, are shown.

CULTURAL TOUCHES ARE PEOPLE’S HAPPINESS 

“Traditions are nothing but preserved memories. (…) – history is also a book or a gallery of memories. (…) Ancient books are arranged in us. (…) All our tastes and styles were once qualities, pride, and pleasures of who knows who. (…) Culture enriches people, art is people’s happiness, and happiness is international, equally human since the beginning of centuries.” (1951)

FRAGMENTS FROM STUDIES ABOUT CULTURE

“Culture, the cultural spirit at its core, is neither Dante, Descartes, nor Beethoven; the urge to soar, the desire for transformation, that urge either sleeps or works in the people. The people are parents and creators. The cultural rush, more than the finished forms of culture, is part of the vital powers of the people.

One of the healthy signs that the cultural urge is more active in people is the restlessness of people to go out into the world, to get to know different realities, different ways of life, different forms of culture or non-culture in addition to their reality with which they are identical. The world wants to the world.” (1952)

“…Nationalism is a big and wicked thing, it doesn’t ask, it doesn’t won’t to know that cosmopolitanism is the most common issue of culture…because culture is only one in all of humanity, therefore by necessity cosmopolitan and kudos to her for being cosmopolitan and unifying at least, when nothing else is until today!”

The exhibition can be viewed here.