Panel discussion 2

Emotional Museum – Curating with care

Exhibitions should not be just about knowledge and learning specific facts about exhibits, but also about emotional experience and reflections of the visitors. Using a new form of engagement with a public, using emotions to ‘provoke’, ‘relate’ and ‘reveal’, means as well a transformation of curating practice. The panelist will, by examples of their museum practice, illustrate the potential of engagement of emotions in museum work. Discussion will highlight how to challenge ignorance and stereotypes, how to use emotional storytelling to engage visitors personally and how to make balance when addressing traumatic histories, ensuring that exhibitions are both respectful and engaging.

Emotional museum: provoke empathy, relate emotionally, reveal forgotten stories (not atrocities).

Tatjana Jurić

History and latin teacher

Tatjana Jurić is a History and Latin teacher at the Gymnasium, as well as a facilitator and trainer. As an experienced lecturer, public speaker, educational consultant, and human rights trainer, she brings a special affinity for challenging and transforming societal stereotypes through applied activities—particularly among vulnerable and marginalized groups in society.

With 12 years of experience as a global trainer, Tatjana has conducted workshops in many countries. She has also participated in numerous international workshops and projects focused on the Holocaust. Additionally, she is deeply interested in other topics within European history of the 19th and 20th centuries, such as the rise of populism and extremism, as well as the status of women across different historical periods.

Tatjana is a trainer for the development of competences for democratic culture within the Pestalozzi Programme of the Council of Europe. She has published a training manual for teachers titled Spirit of Democracy. Her recent work focuses on the importance of media literacy and feminism in the 21st century, with special attention to educating others about women’s fight for their rights throughout history. This is her humble contribution to raising awareness about the significance of this topic.

Elma Hodžić

Historical Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina

Elma Hodžić holds MA in Comparative Literature and Art History from the Faculty of Philosophy in Sarajevo. She has been actively involved in the revitalization process of the History Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina, since 2013. Alongside her colleagues, she has implemented various programs that not only review stories from museum collections but also provide them with a new social context. Exploring the possibilities and potential for interpreting heritage, museum stories, and monuments from various narratological perspectives is one of her areas of focus. She also examines the roles and functions of heritage and museums in the process of constructing collective memory and identity, as well as various aspects of the musealization of the 1992-1995 war through the exhibition “”Besieged Sarajevo”” at the History Museum of BiH. She is the author of the program “”The Story of Museumdom“ and museum programs created for different audiences (preschool, school, seniors, children). Since 2017, she has been the editor-in-chief of the Proceedings of the History Museum of BiH, and since 2022, she has been working as a journalist and editor for culture at Urban Magazine. Since 2023, she has been a member of the Board of the Association of BAM (Association of Information Professionals: Librarians, Archivists, Museologists). After a decade of work at the History Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Elma Hodžić firmly believes in the power of museums to change society.

Cvetanka Vuchkovska-Mitovska

National Institution Memorial House of Mother Teresa in Skopje

Cvetanka Vuchkovska-Mitovska is a Senior Curator at the National Institution Memorial House of Mother Teresa in Skopje, where she has worked since 2014. She is responsible for curating permanent and temporary exhibitions, managing museum collections, and developing educational programs tailored to diverse audiences. She also leads and mentors curatorial staff, collaborates across departments, and ensures cohesive museum programming. Cvetanka actively participates in international conferences and training sessions, focusing on museum professionalism, inclusivity, and accessibility. Over the years, she has authored several publications and has been recognized with multiple awards, including ICOM Macedonia’s Best Project of the Year in 2017 and 2023. Her work emphasizes fostering emotional connections through heritage interpretation and promoting meaningful cultural experiences.

Facilitator: Tatjana Cvjetićanin

Belgrade University

Tatjana Cvjetićanin holds Ph.D. in archaeology from the Belgrade University, Serbia (1997), and she is an alumna of the fellowship programme of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. Her professional career started in the National Museum in Belgrade (now NM of Serbia) in 1990, and she is still working there, at present as the curator of the Late Roman and Early Byzantine collection. She was a former director of the National Museum in Belgrade (2003-2012). Tatjana is also full professor at the Department of Archaeology, Faculty of Philosophy of the University of Belgrade from 2020.
Her experience in museum management, strategic planning and development, and collection presentation and interpretation is rich. Her interests are equally divided between topics related to archaeology in museums – public archaeology and museology and histories of those disciplines, and Roman pottery and phenomena related to the fortified Roman border.
She was involved in the development of the Balkan Museum Network (BMN) from the beginning and currently is the president of the Steering Board of the BMN.