The article is try turning the attention to new forms and actions performed by museums of the 21st century. This is analysis of new forms of activity of ethnographic museums oriented not only on exhibitions, but also on the organization of events such as science fairs, festivals, concerts, workshops. Article is attempting to create a field to discussion about a new ethnographic museum model that would be the answer to contemporary challenges posed by globalization and technology, as well as finding definitions and categorizing knowledge regarding the „modern ethnographic museum”.
The article tackles the problem of the legal measures aiming to protect the cultural and historical heritage. The Legal act of 15th February 1962 on the Protection of the Goods of Culture and Museums, nevertheless novelized, still leaves the place for improvement. First of all, its definitions are not precise and legible (ex. evident cultural goods). Secondly, the supremacy of the state economy over cultural functions results in using the historical objects, nationalized after 1946, regardless their historical values. Thirdly, the museums’ deposits are endangered by lack of proper organization, since the emphasis is put on the expositional function of the museums and not on the other important functions as: storage, conservation and inventorying, cataloguing and gathering documentation. Moreover, the role of the museums is often underestimated, both by the government and by the public. The Law of 26th April 1984 on popularisation of culture and culture popularising employees’ rights and obligations determines the educative role of museums, but the main problem identified is lack of financial and infrastructural resources. The space of the museums is too small to accommodate both the exhibitions and storage of goods and insufficient salaries are not motivating the employees to devote to their work. What’s more, the main, national museums are overcrowded, while the local ones are empty. The significant for the museum’s proper operating is evaluation of possessed pieces of art. The criteria taken into account during the evaluation process are listed and analysed in the further part of the article. Among them we find: historical (basing on age and hence rarity), artistic (strictly connected with the sense of beauty), scientific (being potential objects of research), cultural (importance for cultural heritage and social growth) and material (value measurable in means of payment) value. Other question raised in the article, is extremely extended protection of every good that is considered to have a museum value. In practice, it causes the prohibition of export of every good produced before the 9th May 1945, regardless its real value, without special licence obtained from the Minister of Culture and Art. It concerns also goods owned by private persons. The conclusion of the article highlights that public administration may interfere in culture only in a very limited sphere and it is essential to create self-managing local museums. The second conclusion is the public law’s influence should be limited to the regulation of the management problems, testing of employees and experts and the responsibility for the treasure owned by public institutions.
A crisis situation – which the COVID-19 pandemic undoubtedly is – becomes an opportunity to shift the perspective and propose or even enforce new management solutions. The intensification of museum activities in the virtual world forces the need to ask again questions about audience segmentation, motivation and interaction (Noehrer et al. 2021). Although public cultural institutions (including museums) see the need for conducting audience research, in practice, they focus on counting attendance (Ćwikła et al. 2020). In addition, they are focusing on recipients visiting the buildings of the institution. Therefore, this article aims to answer the question of whether public museums in Poland monitor attendance during online events, on social media and on the website, and if so, what data are taken into account? Based on the interviews and questionnaires, I also tried to find out what are the difficulties in counting audience online. Finally, I make recommendations, including the need to create a measurement system in which different weights will be assigned to different types of audience engagement, including “active” indicators.
In addition to acquainting the public with the culture of a particular region, cultural tourism creates economic opportunities. Taking into account various tourist sites, museums are definitely among the most important ones. In Iran, the National Museum is one of the most important museums because of its rich collection of historical monuments related to the ancient Persia and Islamic periods. The authors of this article analyse the role of the National Museum of Iran in the development of the country’s cultural tourism. The analysis is based on information obtained from the database of the Iranian Cultural Heritage Organization and the National Museum of Iran. Confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modelling were employed for data analysis. The results confirm the importance of the National Museum of Iran in the development of cultural tourism.
This paper presents Polish regulation regarding “right of first offer” in the Museum Act. Author explains the legal nature and allocation of this institution within Polish legal system. The analysis is conducted from perspective of axiology and legal dogma, while the provision under scrutiny is reviewed in the light of constitutional protection of ownership’s right. Moreover, this regulation’s mayor cons are pointed out which result from imprecise usage of terms of legal language for drafting this regulation’s provisions. Consequently, this regulation hardly can be applied, therefore it does not protect monuments as effective as it should be, as it was intended by the Legislator.
In the situation of insufficient subsidies for the substantive activities of museums, primarily the ones funded by the local governments, as well as low attendance of visitors, not really interested in the traditional offer of such institutions, there is an urgent need to extend it with additional elements corresponding to the expectations of a contemporary client. The observation of the thriving museums in Poland and worldwide indicates that cultural events represent such an attractive component which expands the museum offer. The article presents an attempt of explaining the role of cultural events in developing a museum product based on the analysis of a specific case of the Municipal Museum Gerhart Hauptmann’s House in Jelenia Góra-Jagniątków.
The author’s main objective is to define the level of development of the tourism function of the Teutonic Order castles found in the area of contemporary Poland. The author has taken into account both well-preserved and renovated castles, as well as those in a state of ruin. In order to achieve his goal, he analysed forms of castle development and numbers of tourists, which is the main measure of the tourism function. The final stage of the research was to define the tourism rank of the castles studied.
The article attempts to reconstruct the aesthetical category of imaginarium by Andre Malraux. Malraux approached it on various levels: imaginative space of culture participant, artistic creation, museum a set of meanings, cultural codes and symbols. The category is a key to perception of the world where meanings and senses are both interpreted and constituted. The metaphor of imaginarium allows the French thinker to trace the way culture develops its meanings and senses as well as gives opportunity for an analysis of interactions between cutures. It is by imaginarium, its symbolic and meanings cutures develop as well as contact each other, leading to birth of new meanings and symbols.
To properly present the fate of the collection and the Museum one should go back to the times of the Krakow Scientific Society within which the Museum of State Antiquities was established in 1850. Altogether during the period when the Society existed, the Museum acquired several thousand coins, medals, commemorative objects and archaeological artefacts from all annexed territories. After World War II ended, the Museum operated in the area of southern Poland. The majority of incoming artefacts came from excavations conducted on behalf of the Museum. Among donations were e.g. numerous artefacts from Egypt.
This account describes the activity of the Museum in functional terms and reports on the 45-year presence in Słupsk of the Witkacy collection. The presence of Witkacy’s work in Słupsk was instigated by an initial acquisition of 110 works which were brought to Słupsk in 1965. This was part of a post-war endeavour aimed at countering the influence of Germanic traditions then present in the region. In a short space of time the collection of works by Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz became the primary museum collection of Słupsk, eclipsing all other collections including. The museum now works with the City Council in a three-fold way: through exhibition, educational outreach, and as part of broader promotional activity of the City of Słupsk. However, perhaps the Museum's most important measure of success is the international scholastic conferences dedicated to the life and work of Witkiewicz.
During the two-month excavation season, the space of the south pastophorium of the basilica was examined. Excavations in the north part of utility rooms were related to the previous season, and focused mainly on searching for the proper entrance to the “cellar” located below those rooms (# 30, # 33, # 34, # 35), where the deposit of jugs discovered in 2009 (124 items), coins, glass and terracotta were found. Because of annually increasing considerable deterioration of the piers, caused mainly by weather conditions and environment pollution, during the discussed season we made the effort of inventorying the above mentioned structures. In Marea, which used to be a lake port, there are four piers which may have been used for loading and unloading cargo ships and river boats of shallow draught, as well as taking and serving the incoming passengers.
Museums provide public services of an great importance for society. They are custos - guardians of the national treasures. However they are also providing other significant public services. In the structure of the government they act as administrative facilities, what significantly affect their activity. Contemporary issues in the management of public museums is connected with the widely described in the literature crisis of public entities providing services for society.
This is a review of Egyptian sarcophagi, probably the most spectacular artefacts in Polish collections, exclusive of those which appeared as a result of organised archaeological excavations. The survey has contributed to verifying some erroneous information in the literature of the subject, provided new information concerning less well-known artefacts of that type and, above all, drew attention to Aleksander Branicki (1821-1877) and his previously unknown excavation work in Egypt.
Cultural heritage institutions (e.g. museums) expand the scope of information technology adaptation and make mobile applications available to the users. Up to date mobile devices (like smartphones or tablets) become fully functional devices for display and interaction with online museum information resources. This type of information dissemination can be exploited efficiently in shaping information literacies for young users for whom mobile device has become a major tool for communication, entertainment and knowledge acquisition. The paper presents the results of comparative analysis of mobile applications for museum information services in Poland. The study covered recent and most popular mobile application for online exhibitions and for accessing museum collections and it has been limited to mobile applications for Android operation system. The analysis was based on selected applications highly rated on Google Play Store and AppBrain.com. The popularity of mobile applications was established based on statistical data- rating score, user comments and the total number of downloads. The study indicates selected features such as mobile devices capacities, built-in mechanisms (gyroscope, GPS, camera), interactivity and multimedia features.
The largest and pitiless concentration camp in the fascist Croatia was located in Jasenovac on the Sava river, near the Bosnian border. In early 1960s the memorial site and museum was founded there. The article proposes an analyze of the public debate in Croatia in 2004-2006, related to the complete change of the museum exposition. Supporters of the change emphasize new perspective of commemoration, individualization of a victim, and giving him/her the dignity back. On the other side are opponents which point out that the change can obscure the Croatian responsibility for the crime, and strengthens the revisionist policy towards the NDH (Croatian fascist state during the 2nd world war). As it turned out, the organization of the museum is related to the most important problems of the Croatian identity and the interpretation of the past.
The aim of the article is to present the results of a quantitative survey of marketing managers in Polish museums on the marketing communication tools used in these institutions. The survey was conducted using the CAWI method in 2017 on a group of 85 marketing managers in museums. In the study, the scope of application and the importance of particular marketing communication tools for museums were established. It has been shown that advertising and Public Relations have a key role in the promotion of museums, in particular contact with the media and the organization of events. This study shows that a large group of Polish museums uses a fairly narrow range of marketing communication tools and that they only sporadically reach for modern communication tools. The article also presents the factors that have a positive and negative impact on the possibility of implementing effective marketing communication in museums.
The aim of this article is to present the activities of the Katowice Cultural Institution Pantheon Upper Silesia, taking into account educational and popularization values. The author focuses on presenting individual initiatives undertaken by the institution’s employees to demonstrate how a relatively young institution approaches the issue of knowledge transfer and its popularization.
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