MUSEUMS – VIEW FROM THE INSIDE

Abstract

The publication Museums, exhibits, museum professionals complements our knowledge of how museums functioned in the Communist period and their situation after 1989. The book includes discussions or memoirs by eleven people vital to Polish museology, who were connected with National Museums (in Cracow, Poznań and Wrocław), museum-residences (the Wawel Museum, the Royal Castle in Warsaw), specialised museums (the National Maritime Museum in Gdańsk, the Museum of Literature in Warsaw, the Jagiellonian University Museum), ethnographic museums (in Cracow and Toruń) and the Tatra Museum, which is an example of an important regional museum in Poland. Among the people are Zofia Gołubiew, Mariusz Hermansdofer, Jerzy Litwin, Janusz Odrowąż-Pieniążek, Jan Ostrowski, Andrzej Rottermund and Stanisław Waltoś. The book presents the image of Polish museology in a scattershot but interesting way. It also mentions more detailed aspects, such as how particular museums were founded or developed in the Communist period, and the individual role of museum professionals in founding and developing the establishments they managed. However, the most attention is paid to issues regarding the state of museums after 1989. The most important of these include the contemporary functions and tasks of those establishments and the challenges they will face in the future, and the role of a musealium and its place in a contemporary museum. The observations regarding internal changes in museum institutions, in the “master-disciple” relation in the past and today, the appearance of new specialities, and the change of their status and role in institutions (for example, of people responsible for education) are also noteworthy. Another significant thread is the discussion on the definition of a “museum professional” and which museum employees may use this title.