site.btaNo Joke: Gabrovo's Museum of Humour and Satire Turns 50 on April Fools' Day

A unique cultural institution - the Museum of Humour and Satire, will celebrate its 50th birthday on Friday.

The cultural landmark was set up - appropriately, on April 1, 1972. It built on an age-old tradition of Gabrovian folk humour and carnival festivities. The idea was to provide humorists and satirists (invariably the bêtes noires of the official authorities) with a venue of their own.

The Museum was established with an enthusiasm and ambition to cover a broad spectrum of the comic on a global scale and has asserted itself as an unrivalled promoter of contemporary humour and satire in the arts back since the late 1970s.

The Museum is housed in the Kalpazanov Bros.' old tannery on the left bank of the River Yantra. This is the first case in Bulgaria in which an old industrial building has been converted for cultural purposes. Resourceful Gabrovo claims credit as a pioneer of this worldwide trend in recent years. 

Under a motto devised by prominent Bulgarian satirist Radoy Ralin, "The World Lasts Because It Laughs", the Museum has amassed 38,174 art works in humour and satire and held international and national competitions in art, literature, folklore, film and theatre, including the International Biennial of Humour and Satire in the Arts (since 1973). The foundations of a Park of Laughter were laid in 1981. In 1983 the institution launched its humour and satire almanac APROPOS in Bulgarian, Russian, English and French. In 1985 it started Bulgaria's first Experimental Satirical Variety Theatre. The Museum set up a specialized library of humour and satire publications and built a database of the addresses of thousands of artists and institutions around the world specializing in humour. Its ten exhibition halls total 8,000 sq m. The Museum's own website, https://www.humorhouse.bg, dates from 1998.

Over the last 12 years, the Museum won grant financing for 30 projects under national and European programmes and regained its status as a magnet for tourists.

The Museum of Humour and Satire will mark its first half century by an open day including the unveiling of a new display and a cartoon exhibition, a lecture, a rock blues concert, and a daylong play for children.