The essay describes the exhibition Chroma held at the Metropolitan Museum in New York (5th June 2022 – 26th March 2023) on the subject of polychromy in Ancient Greek sculpture. The author presents a short description of the history of research into the Greeks painting their sculptures as well as of the political context of this issue, in which the whiteness of the marble statues is intertwined with the idea of a white Western European civilization. Another important context is that of the American political landscape, in particular far-right, racist movements, which often appropriate symbols connected with what they see as “white” Greek civilization.

The iconic discovery in 1912 of X-ray diffraction by crystals has revolutionized physics, chemistry, biology, and ultimately also life sciences, by providing a powerful method for structural characterization of drugs and drug targets used in molecular medicine. The first X-ray diffraction was recorded by an assistant (Walter Friedrich) and PhD student (Paul Knipping) under the instruction of a theoretician Max (later von) Laue, who two years later was the sole recipient of a Nobel Prize (with the award ceremony in 1920) awarded for this discovery. The experimental setup, now on display in Deutsches Museum München, is labeled “the original Laue apparatus”, which is doubly incorrect: Laue himself never experimented with it, and it has a number of reconstructed parts due to loss, or even theft in the Museum itself. Also, the “first X-ray diffraction photograph” is enshrouded in a mist of ambiguity. Laue’s Nobel medal was deliberately dissolved in aqua regia to evade identification and confiscation by the Nazis. A replica was minted but it has been lost without a trace. The distorted (embellished) account of this fundamental discovery makes one wonder: is it acceptable to repeat narrations about scientific achievements with some departure from the historical truth? We answer “reluctantly yes”, with the caveat that all possible effort should be expended to rectify the picture. And this article is trying to achieve exactly this, with respect to one discovery in physics.

The article discusses the expansion of the influence of the museum as a culture forming structure on the example of one of the most beautiful cities in Eastern Europe. Lviv is considered a regional metropolis, its cultural influence extends across Western Ukraine. The paper presents the evolution of the museum’s function in the spatial development of Lviv and urban conditions of expanding this function in a modern city. The need for the placement of museum complexes on the outskirts of Lviv’s city center was determined.

Museum exhibits and collections can be presented in a variety of ways. Studying how museum displays have developed over the years can tell us much about the history of science.

The restored Royal Castle in Warsaw includes original decorative pieces that link it back to its illustrious past from before WWII

From 20th to 28th August 2022, the 26th ICOM General Conference took place in Prague. Its main theme was “The Power of Museums”. The conference was the product of a long discussion about defining the contemporary role of museums and their obligations to the past, present, and future. In the article titled: The Humans and their History in Museums. A few Reflections about the 26th ICOM General Conference in Prague the author discusses the course of proceedings and asks questions about the character and nature of the museum’s work in the field of history as an academic discipline. Some of the most important questions discussed in the paper include those on: museums’ aspirations in the field of sensual depiction of history; the relationship between the tangible and intangible heritage within museums’ method of work; the role of heritage interpretation as the basic tool of contact with the audience; and the urgent issue of neutrality and institutions’ engagement in the face of contemporary challenges. The source materials used in order to find answers to these questions are the legal acts about museums; the resolutions of the 1st Congress of Polish Museum Professionals (April 2015 in Łódź); and the definitions that constitute museums, both through legal acts on the state level and those passed by the International Council of Museums (ICOM).

Boulevards of Vistula, which are valuable assets in the urban planning of Kraków, constitute a key cultural development of the city. The author addresses the subject of functional activation of the Vistula river valley in Kraków, in the context of citygenic processes of the district of Zabłocie. Raising the issue of synthesis of contemporary museum and architecture, presents the Master Thesis Museum of photography at Zabłocie Street in Kraków.

The authors show how to strengthen the educational power of the museum. Emphasize the historical and contextual variability of the main functions performed by museum, indicate that the location of the museum in the community of the city and broaden the scope of its activities to different communities. Characterized by contemporary models of museum education, along with the arguments for taming the different models of learning both by visitors and museum’s staff. & e article presents two practices, which, in the opinion of the authors are conducive to learning in/and by the museum.

The author presents changes which took place in the 3 eld of ideas of presenting art to the city audience at the end of the twentieth century. She draws attention to the importance of a movement of so-called “new museology”, which revised the museum practitioners’ attitudes towards art viewers. She presents taken from Poland and Europe practices of realizing artistic practices outside exhibition halls, directly in the public space, with immediate access to the viewer, who also is invited to participate in a process of creation of the art work together with the artist. She indicates a consequence of this practice, which is a formation of a so-called “new audience” – conscious of their expectations towards cultural institutions. In the end, the author mentions a research project on the phenomenon of the “new audience” initiated in the framework of the international project “Artecitya”.

The article analyzes museum representations of communism in Poland from the perspective of exhibition strategies influencing the public understanding of the past. Over the past forty years, Western museums have increasingly moved away from the affirmative model of presenting the past, dominating since the nineteenth century, towards critical paradigms and even those pro-moting social activism. The analysis of Polish exhibitions devoted to recent history carried out from this perspective allows us to reveal the functions fulfilled by museum institutions in the Polish social and political reality.

The article is a critical analysis of an exhibition entitled The Primer that was opened at the State Museum at Majdanek in 2003. Tomasz Pietrasiewicz’s project is not a classic historical exhibition and the aim of the article is to prove its innovative character.

In this brief article five bronze fibulae will be presented which are being exposed in the museum of Kahramanmaraş and belonging to the Roman period. These five examples are rare and significant for the Roman archaeology of Asia Minor.

In this brief article five bronze fibulae, being exposed in the museum of Şanlıurfa and belonging to the Iron Age, will be presented. At least two of these five were found at Lidar Höyük.

Władysław Łuszczkiewicz was an art historian, artist, pedagogue, an outstanding personality of nineteenth-century Krakow, active in many fields. He was a professor at the Cracow School of Fine Arts, and in the years 1857–1873 and 1893–1895 he was the headmaster of this school. He was a teacher of many artists, of which it is enough to mention only the greatest — Jan Matejko, Stanisław Wyspiański, Józef Mehoffer and Artur Grottger. In 1883, Łuszczkiewicz was appointed the director of the National Museum in Krakow. He managed this institution until his death, that is until 1900.

Among the oldest source materials belonging to the Archive of the National Museum in Krakow, we can find the correspondence of former students of the School of Fine Arts addressed directly to their former teacher — Professor Łuszczkiewicz, who was at this time the director of the National Museum in Krakow. Based on selected letters, the article presents their interesting subject matter and presents the issues in which the students wrote to their Master. The attempt to describe the relation between former students and their master revealed in letters will be made.

Visitors to natural history museums can admire replicas of animals that died out ages ago. What tricks can be used to “bring them to life”? How have such animals been reconstructed in the past, and how is it done today?

The Muzeum Emigracji, established in 2012, is a notable exemplar of the burgeoning narrative history museums in Poland and, notably, the only Polish migration museum to date. Its permanent exhibition traces the history of Polish emigration from the 19th century to the present. In this context, this examination, grounded in migration and museum research, scrutinizes the representation of Polish migrants and their descendants within the exhibition section titled “Polonia and the Poles in the World”. This analysis cen-ters on the narratives presented therein.

The central contention posits that the organizing principle of the exhibition revolves around a national narrative: the migrants’ history unfolds predominantly from the perspective of their country of origin. Concurrently, the exhibition continues to regard migrants and their progeny as integral components of the Polish national community. They are portrayed as a valuable resource that enhances the standing of the Polish nation abroad or fulfils various roles in its service. Consequently, the multifaceted identity concepts of the migrants fade into the background within this representation.

The paper offers a reappraisal of the Puławy collection’s display through a detailed analysis of Virgilian evocations within the complex. The choice of inscriptions and ancient imagery framing the exposition’s narrative, as well as the surviving reception testimonies towards such strategies within Pulavian pavilions, demonstrate an ongoing questioning of chronological sequences, the primacy of authenticity, and aestheticising exhibits. Such anachronic distancing from a historicizing temporality would take place in favour of an intimate experience of familial-cum-national memorabilia, in accordance with the contemporaneously emerging category of the fetish.

The collection of the Asia and Pacific Museum in Warsaw contains significant objects representing the culture of peoples from many regions of Asia, including Polynesia, Indonesia and even Papua New Guinea. The cultures of Turkish and Mongolian peoples of Central Asia are richly represented among them. Among the objects of these regions and cultures, a collection of felt products significantly distinguishes itself. However, these felts have never been exhibited as a whole collection, nor as a part of a monographic exhibition dedicated to the craft of felt. A significant part of them belongs to the earliest collections from the 1990’s from Afghanistan. It represents many different cultural groups: Turkmen, Kazakhs, Uzbeks, Kyrgyz people and even Tajiks. From the historian’s or art historian’s point of view, it is a very young and new collection. But, taking into account the specifics of felt production and the ways it is used, as well as the fact that felt is rather underestimated by its producers, users, traders, researchers and collectors (in terms of the art market), it should be noted that felt products were rarely bought and collected by esteemed institutions. Apart from museums of Tsarist Russia, and later, their heirs: Soviet and post-Soviet museums in Central Asian countries, along with some western European museums, collections of felt products are rather rare in the world. The felt collection of the Asia and Pacific Museum in Warsaw appears to be a rare example here. The aim of this paper is to present the felt collection of the Asia and Pacific Museum in Warsaw, in terms of its objects, as well as its ethnographic and historical value.

Photographs from the Archive of the Asia and Pacific Museum in Warsaw were taken by Eugeniusz Helbert and Ewa Soszko-Dziwisińska.

Photographs from the author’s archive were taken by Marzena Godzińska.

We talk with Prof. Andrzej Jajszczyk about his encounter with the historic ethnic group of Slovincians, his friendship with film director Andrzej Wajda, and his fascination with Japanese culture.

In the collection of the National Museum in Warsaw there are four small sets, originating from the eastern lands of the former Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. They had belonged to the collection of Józef Choynowski and, as a deposit of the Society for the Encouragement of Fine Arts, in 1923 became a part of the Museum’s collection. They represent quite a wide time horizon, dated from the beginning of the 16th century to the half of the 17th century. Their compositions are similar to deposits from the same period, and size allow to determine them as content of purses. The older hoards are homogeneous in nature, while the later ones are more varied, including, among others, many counterfeit coins. The circumstances of their deposition are unknown.

The Kórnik Library is one of the oldest and most valuable establishments in Poland. By creating a library during the Partitions of Poland and collecting valuable old books and manuscripts, Tytus Działyński intended to save and foster Polish culture and traditions for posterity. Heir to Tytus – Jan Działyński – secured and expanded the Library. Having no heir himself, Jan Działyński left the Działyński inheritance to his nephew, Władysław Zamoyski, who continued his grandfather's and uncle's work. Just before his death, Władysław Zamoyski donated the entire inherited property to the Polish nation. In 1924, he established a Foundation meant to supervise the Library, a museum and the Institute of Dendrology. The Zakłady Kórnickie Foundation operated until 1953 when it was taken over by the Polish Academy of Sciences and has remained within its structure until today. The library continues assembling, developing and sharing its collections. The latest technologies have enabled us to provide the library and museum collections to the largest possible number of readers. The collections have been successively digitized and made available on the Digital Platform of the Kórnik Library created as part of the EU project POPC.02.03.01-IP.01-00-002/15 “Digital access to the resources of the Polish Academy of Sciences in the Library”.

For the Gdansk Library, participation in the Nights of Museums is an effective way of execution of its didactic and science-promoting goals defined in its mission. The interesting main themes, presentation of the library’s rich collections, as well as the involvement of the organisers and the participating staff members all translated into the success of the nine editions of the event between 2011 and 2019. Their subsequent main themes were: A night with Johannes Hevelius from the treasury of the Gdansk Library, Fashion for books – fashion in books, Horror in the library, The world of the library on one night, Taking a book to further than the horizon, The Library as a Garden, Gedanum domus nostra – Our home – Gdansk, In mari vita tua – In the sea is your life, Genius – on the 500th death anniversary of Leonardo da Vinci. During the past Night of Museums, visitors to the Library were most impressed by the displays in the Reading Room of Historical Collections. Such presentations are sometimes the only opportunity to have a close contact with valuable manuscripts, old printed books, prints, and other special collections, and to hear competent staff members talking about them. Regular attractions of the Night of Museums included displays referring to the theme of the event in the exhibition room and a sale of library publications in the hall of the historical building at ul. Wałowa 15. The subsequent organisers of the project, also in cooperation with other cultural institutions from the Tri-City, each time enriched the programme with fascinating talks, thematic workshops, and even concerts. During the subsequent editions of the Night of Museums, the Gdansk Library hosted an average of 670 visitors, which testifies to the value of this tool of promotion of the library.

Rzeczy Piękne [Beautiful Things] (1918–1932) was a monthly publication of the Adrian Baraniecki Municipal Industrial Museum in Cracow. Among its distinctive features were a sophisticated graphic layout and eye-catching initials. The latter are remarkable for one more reason. While decorative initials are usually associated with of book design, it is rare to find a set of artistic ornaments commissioned specially for a periodical. This study has shown that the initials owe their distinct character not only to the ideas of the arts and crafts association Warsztaty Krakowskie [Cracow Workshops] but also to an original and attractive technique of composition.