The Order of Things, Warsaw National Ethnographic Museum
“The Order of Things. The storeroom of Piotr B. Szacki” is a exhibition in the form of a museum magazine with the accompaniment of multimedia, exhibits related to crafts (tools in the field of obtaining and processing food, breeding, etc.). The objects are arranged according to the author’s classification of the late museum employee, ethnographer Piotr B. Szacki.
Become an ethnographer! For the first time in the history of Polish museology a collection storeroom, a place usually off-limits for non-employees, has been made available for visitors.
A great number of tools used for farming, animal husbandry, gathering, fishing, apiculture, and handicraft is stored here, everything in a perfect order. The oldest objects come from the mid-19th century, the newest ones – handicraft objects or self-made tools – were made in the 1970s.
The storeroom entered the modern age and nowadays it also uses new technologies. Digital frames present archival video recordings documenting the way the collected objects were used, and a multimedia kiosk shows photographs and articles about them.
A worktable takes up the exhibition’s centre, where you can find any of the displayed objects in a digital collection inventory and read its card in an academic catalogue. Moreover, visitors are also able to see other secret tools of an ethnographer – questionnaires, field notes, reports, and photographs taken during work.
The unique classification of museum objects was a brainchild of Piotr Szacki, an eminent museologist and employee of the National Ethnographic Museum in Warsaw in 1962-2004.
National Ethnographic Museum in Warsaw
The National Ethnographic Museum is a space where the achievements of world culture meet with individual sensitivity, becoming an inspiration to discover the beauty of diversity.
The State Ethnographic Museum – one of the oldest ethnographic museums in Poland. The museum was founded in 1888 and houses over 80,000 objects and about 120,000 archives. The Ethnographic Museum presents several permanent exhibitions and over a dozen temporary exhibitions a year.
In modern interiors, we present permanent and temporary exhibitions of interdisciplinary character and diverse themes. The autonomous structure of our institution is dedicated to the youngest Children’s Museum, where you can touch everything. The museum also has a library and the Antropos cinema with an unconventional repertoire. In the Bílý Koníček café you can get acquainted with the offer of the bookstore and shop while drinking coffee. In addition, the museum hosts trade fairs, special events, meetings with authors, workshops and seminars. Therefore, we encourage you to actively participate in culture – children, youth and adults.
National Ethnographic Museum diversity and richness of cultures around the world and present their values as a nationwide good, thus contributing to the development of an open society.