In cooperation between the JGL Pharmacy Museum and the Rijeka City Museum, an exhibition dedicated to the Alga Sušak Pharmacy and Cosmetic Laboratory was opened.
The exhibition is primarily motivated by direct communication with the visitors of the two museums and the knowledge that the story of Alga, although extremely interesting, is relatively unknown among our fellow citizens. The Alga Sušak laboratory left a significant mark in the history of Rijeka, and it is an unavoidable part of the significant economic history of Sušak in the years between the two world wars. The story of the Pharmacy and Cosmetic Laboratory “Alga” is a family, local, but also a story from the national history of pharmacy that deserves to be told. It is a story about the vision of the authors and founders of Laboratory Alga Dink Budak and Vladimir Kezele, a story about the rapid development of the pharmaceutical industry in Croatia, a story about extremely advanced marketing ideas of that era, and finally a story about the turbulent history of our region in the first half of the last century.
The events surrounding the creation and development of the Alga Laboratory are insufficiently known to today’s generations, and the exhibition and catalog are an opportunity to remind older citizens of forgotten stories. Both at the Rijeka City Museum and the JGL Pharmacy Museum, we believe that it is important that the story of the Alga Laboratory, as well as the vision and efforts of its founders, be accessible to everyone.
Alga is linked to Sušak in the time between the two world wars, when it first moved production from Rijeka, and then built its own plant. In the mentioned period, Sušak was an important Yugoslav city and economic center, an important port and intersection of transport routes. From 1924, the transformation of a small town into an important political, economic, cultural, trade and traffic center began, and by the beginning of World War II, the number of inhabitants of Sušak would have doubled. Alga and Sušak are developing in parallel, and are living their golden years. Each Algin product does not fail to remind you where it comes from and where it is produced with the inscription on the packaging. But let’s not delay, you will find out all these and many other details right at this exhibition and in the catalog issued on the occasion of the exhibition.
The exhibition can be viewed until May 31 at the Museum of the City of Rijeka, Trg Riccardo Zanella 1/1, Tuesday-Saturday 12:00-6:00 p.m.
