Blog

On Saturday, 28 March 2026, a music-humanistic performance took place at the Museum of Madness at Cmurek Castle in Trate, attracting more than one hundred visitors and successfully opening the new museum season.

The European Museum Forum has announced the nominees for the EMYA 2026 – European Museum of the Year Award. Among them is the Museum of Madness, which has been operating for thirteen years at Cmurek Castle in Trate, Slovenia. A total of 35 nominated European museums will present their work at the EMYA 2026 conference in Bilbao, Spain, from 10 to 14 June, where the winners will also be announced and the awards presented.

On Friday, 14 November 2025, a public consultation on opportunities for cooperation between non-governmental organisations and public services in the field of cultural heritage protection in Slovenia will be held at Cmurek Castle. The event will focus on the exchange of experiences, the presentation of good practices, and a discussion on opportunities for cooperation between the public and non-governmental sectors in the management of cultural heritage.

Home for the Mentally Defective in Trate is the English translation of a guidebook originally published in Slovenian in 2024 under the title Dom za duševno defektne. The publication was supported by the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia.

On the 20th anniversary of the Faro Convention, we presented the experience of the Museum of Madness and its associated heritage community at the 11th Symposium of Ethnologists and Conservators, entitled Challenges of Cultural Heritage Protection in Light of the Faro Convention.

In September 2025, the Museum of Madness participated for the first time in the annual meeting of the Faro Network. Read more about the activity below.

The Poglej! association awarded the Museum of Madness with the 2024 Renate Ažman Award for outstanding achievements in the field of mental health. The award ceremony took place in Ljubljana on 14 February 2025.

The following text is published as a foreword in the book Home of the Mentally Defective Trate issued by the Museum of Madness in 2024. Since the book is so far available only in Slovenian, we invite the non-Slovenian speaking readers to read the foreword, which was originally written in English.  

In this book, Sonja Bezjak presents the life and work in the former Home for the Mentally Defective and later the Institute for the Mentally and Nervously Ill, which operated in the Cmurek Castle in Trate. The foreword was written by Prosper Wanner, a member of the European network of the Faro Convention, and the introductory thoughts by Darja Farasin, co-founder of the Museum of Madness.

On Human Rights Day, the Museum of Madness calls for the respect of human rights for those residing in long-term care institutions.