A final farewell to our colleague Darko Rukavina
Our dear colleague and friend, museum advisor, Mr. Sc. Darko Rukavina, has passed away. The news caught us all by surprise, shocked us and saddened us…
I believe Darko Rukavina needs no special introduction. A geologist and palaeontologist by education, he graduated from the Faculty of Science, where he also earned the degree of Master of Science.
A museum professional in the fullest sense of the word, he spent most of his working life at the Croatian Natural History Museum, in its Geological and Palaeontological Department.
He began working at the Museum in the early 1980s, after having refined his profession in the Academy’s Geological and Palaeontological Collection and Karst Laboratory, today’s Institute for Quaternary Palaeontology and Geology, spending several months at a time in the field with Academician Mirko Malez and other colleagues, researching Quaternary deposits in numerous Croatian caves.
In almost thirty years of work at the Croatian Natural History Museum, Darko Rukavina truly left an indelible mark. And that is not just a phrase.
His dedication to museum work was reflected in all aspects of his work. With equal devotion, professionalism and conscientiousness, he approached work on the collections as well as their presentation through numerous inspired exhibitions that will long be remembered in museum circles, and will certainly live on in the memory of the museum public.
The Osteological Collection of Mammals and Reptiles, of which he was curator, was carefully and lovingly preserved under his expert guidance, managed with exceptional knowledge of the material and, of course, with a very special love for Pleistocene animals.
Darko also possessed that special, refined kind of creativity which was particularly evident in his exhibitions. Let us remember them: The Age of Dinosaurs, 1995, The Ice Age, 1996, Restless Earth, 2004, and Sharks: Megalodon, 2007.
These exhibitions were, of course, professionally and scientifically grounded, but they also regularly brought something new, attractive and appealing, whether it was a carefully made reconstruction created for that purpose or a completely unusual installation that attracted visitors.
It is therefore no surprise that, for example, for the exhibition Sharks: Megalodon, the queue to enter the exhibition sometimes reached halfway down Mesnička Street!
The catalogues of his exhibitions were not only full of information and captivating details, they were also visually appealing. How could they not be, when Darko created most of the illustrations for the catalogues himself, spending much of his free time trying to depict an Ice Age animal in its characteristic environment through drawings.
Our Darko was a brilliant illustrator…
He always completed his work on exhibitions and catalogues on time, in fact much earlier than required. Unlike us ordinary curators, who were still solving electrical problems, moving display cases, running after catalogues or attaching labels at the last minute half an hour before an exhibition opening, Darko’s exhibitions were always finished and impeccably installed, and the catalogues printed and neatly arranged at least a week before the opening.
There was never any rush, never any nervousness, never any confusion, never any panic…
In addition to the numerous papers, professional and scientific articles he published in various journals, I will mention two more museum publications that should be highlighted: Catalogue of Fossil Invertebrates Stored in the Croatian Natural History Museum, in three parts, printed in 2003, 2004 and 2006, and the very useful Manual for the Preparation and Protection of Fossils for museums, which he published together with Hrvoje Malinar in 2006.
How much Darko loved the Museum is also shown by the fact that in the final months of his life, when he was clearly burdened by health problems, he completely avoided that topic during long telephone conversations, turning almost the entire conversation toward questions about current events at the Museum.
We express our deepest condolences to his family. Darko will be endlessly missed by all of us at the Museum. We will miss his calm and wise attitude toward events, and we will miss his many unobtrusive but irreplaceable comments…
Katarina Krizmanić