Muzeum Narodowe w Poznaniu

The beginnings of the Ethnographic Museum are inextricably linked with the activities of the Folklore Society, founded in Poznań in 1910. Its president was then Helena Cichowicz, who together with her daughter Wiesława took up collecting and compiling ethnographic collections. Their commitment and passion led to the opening, on December 28, 1911, of the first ethnographic exhibition at the seat of the Society of Friends of Sciences in Poznań.

In 1920, the folklore collection was handed over to the Wielkopolska Museum (now the National Museum in Poznań), within which the Department of Ethnology was created. Helena and Wiesława Cichowicz, and they were presented again at the exhibition opened in May 1921.

In the interwar period – thanks to Helena’s continuous work, and after her death in 1929, also her daughter Wiesława – the collection grew and enriched, also with exotic collections from Africa and New Guinea.

During World War II, ethnographic objects were almost completely destroyed and scattered. The few survivors, found after 1945, gave rise to the Department of Folk Culture and Art, established as part of the Wielkopolska Museum. The rebuilt collection began to expand after the decision to locate the ethnographic collection in the Rogalin Palace and the opening of the first post-war exhibition in 1949. Systematic accumulation and development of the collection took place only after 1950, when the first permanent employee was employed in the Department. It was Stanisław Błaszczyk and it is to him that the Ethnographic Museum owes the shape of the present collection.

In 1962, the Department was renamed the Branch, gaining a new seat in Poznań – in the building of the former Masonic Lodge, where it functions to this day. This building, built in the years 1817–1819, is an example of late Classicist architecture. However, it had to undergo a major renovation in the form of a reconstruction, which lasted until 1986.

The museum is surrounded by a historic baroque park with preserved old trees. In its center there is a historic 17th-century manhole.

Today, the Ethnographic Museum, a branch of the National Museum in Poznań (name given in 1974), continues to collect its collections and presents them at its own temporary exhibitions and in other museums in Poland and abroad. They bring closer the issues of Polish culture, the region of Greater Poland, as well as distant, unknown and exotic territories. Through its activities, the museum tries to be a place of getting to know, discuss, reflect and exchange various points of view.