The symposium was financed by Flora Turner-Vucinic, art historian and president of the British-Croatian Society in London. Her project on the mapping of Croatia in United Kingdom collections is aimed at bringing attention to the works of Croatian artists, archaeological finds and other material from Croatia which are now displayed in UK museums.
Evans was curator of the Ashmolean, the oldest public museum in Europe, from 1884 to 1908. Between 1871 and 1882, he travelled in present-day Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina as an archaeologist and journalist.
While travelling in Dalmatia in 1879, he traded his hat for the marble heads of Octavian's wife Livia and Mercury which had been dug up by a farmer. Livia's head is displayed at the Ashmolean. It was joined with the rest of her statue, which was found later.