On the 18th of May 2024, the National Museum of Natural History, Sofia and its Asenovgrad branch, the Palaeontological Museum “Dimitar Kovachev,” celebrated the International Day of Museums and the European Night of the Museums by offering free entry for all visitors from 10:00 until 23:30.
In the building on boulevard Tsar Osvoboditel 1 in Sofia, visitors could view the permanent exhibit with collections representing Earth’s biological and mineralogical diversity, as well as the only Moon samples and Martian meteorites in the country.
A centrepiece of the event was the themed program dedicated to #Pollinators we can’t live without, prepared by Assoc. Prof. Nikolay Simov (NMNHS), Assoc. Prof. Mario Langourov (NMNHS), Assoc. Prof. Rostislav Bekchiev (NMNHS), Assoc. Prof. Asya Asenova (Biology Department of Sofia University), and Sen. Assist. Dr Rumyana Kostova (Biology Department of Sofia University). Together with volunteers from the Biology Department of Sofia University, they held educational workshops for students and explained what constitutes a pollinator and how diverse the animals that act as pollinators can be.
The presentations for students and adults “Pollen isn’t just for bees” and “Pollinator monitoring and citizen science — idea for Europe” offered the audience some interesting questions to discuss with scientists from NMNHS.
For the youngest visitors, amateur beekeepers Liudmila Rusimova and Milena Doicheva opened their travelling beehive once again, allowing us to look into the secrets of the bee world.
The series of events in the #Pollinators we can’t live without program was organised together with the Ministry of Environment and Waters and was dedicated to the International Bee Day — May 20.
In the temporary exhibit ILLUSTRATORIUM II, visitors met Denitsa Peneva from the Society of Animalists, Florists, and Scientific Illustrators. In her author’s tour of the ILLUSTRATORIUM II exhibit, Denitsa described her work as a scientific illustrator and the difficult journey towards one of the most prestigious scientific illustration awards — “Nature Illustration” from the big international competition “Illustraciencia.”
The evening’s program concluded with a meeting with the scientist, explorer, and traveller Prof. Petar Beron, who presented the newest book from his series “Around the World with Petar Beron” in Book with an Autograph: Presenting the Book “Djambo, Mzee!”.
The Asenovgrad branch of NMNHS, the Palaeontological Museum “Dimitar Kovachev,” participated in the European Night of the Museums for the second year in a row with the exhibit “Dinosaurs Up Close” by NMNHS palaeontologist and palaeoartist Assist. Vladimir Nikolov. The exhibit presents prints of a selection of original paintings representative of his work from 2014—2023. The artist’s focus is on the detailed portrait of a specific animal and the exact recreation of its anatomy, or on revealing scenes of everyday life for dinosaurs and their contemporaries by relying on the newest scientific hypothesis and current palaeontological data. The exhibit was officially opened by Engineer Petar Petrov, Deputy Mayor of the Asenovgrad region, together with curator ot the Palaeontological branch, Dr Nedko Nedyalkov.