Everyday items from the Polish People’s Republic (PRL) period are taking a trip around Poland.
Vistulan Museum | Castle in Janowiec
Lubelska 20, Janowiec
July 22nd – October 14th 2018
Opening times: 10AM – 5PM
Collected items representing different aspects of everyday life in the late 1980s are displayed to the public in the Vistulan Museum in the Castle in Janowiec. The exhibition is available to people with special needs through audio description and films with sign language translations. They can be used according to their purpose. Put together, however, they create a kind of “laboratory” that transports us into the year 1988 – colliding the not so distant reality of that time with the current one. Our memories, associations, and our compassion engages allowing us to empathise with another human being, opening us to new experiences and a new perspective. Additional educational materials accompany the exhibition, making a solo visit more comprehensive.
Educational activities
Ekspedycja ‘88 also invites the youngest in the audience to learn first hand what their parents’ everyday life looked like, but also what fascinated them, what interested them. Multigenerational workshops entitled “Discoverers” for adults and whole families will be a unique opportunity to share experiences and learn about each other.
The Idea
The exhibition Ekspedycja ‘88 is a pilot project – a process of building a coherent collection of educational, ethnographic and widely available artefacts from the second half of the 20th century for the National Ethnographic Museum in Warsaw. The key to its birth was the year 1988: last year before transformation, and last year that, despite its 70th anniversary, didn’t bare witness to any celebrations of the restoration of Poland’s sovereignty of 1918. It was also the year of a round 100th anniversary of the opening of the National Ethnological Museum in Warsaw.
Ekspedycja ‘88 offers a possibility of direct, even tangible contact with the collection of unique artefacts, also providing food for thought on the role that everyday objects have in our lives – how our attitude towards them changes, what happens when we no longer need them, or when the need to own turns into a need to collect. The presented items inspire to contemplate on the wide variety of aspects of culture and heritage.
Exhibition production
Curator and author of the project: Anna Grunwald
Concept, exhibition design, multimedia: Marcin Kuropatwa, Katarzyna Lewoc, Katarzyna Similak, Paweł Lewoc (Pavilon)
Content supervision: dr Adam Czyżewski
Special needs assistance tools, texts, filmsm: dr Edyta Lisek-Lubaś, Bartłomiej Żurawski, Andrzej Tracz (Zorro Design)
Content cooperation, materials, educational events: Magdalena Stępień, Justyna Dominiak, Magdalena Dąbrowska, Angelika Dziurawiec, dr Paweł Matwiejczuk, Biuro Badań Społecznych Question Mark (Office for Social Research)
Promotion, editorial supervision: Elżbieta Czyżewska, Anastazja Stelmach, Anahita Rezaei.
The exhibition Ekspedycja ‘88 is the result of the project “E-Kolekcja” (Ethnographic, educational collection) produced in the National Ethnographic museum in Warsaw in the years 2017-18 as part of the programme “Folk and traditional culture” funded by the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage and the Marshal’s Office of the Mazowieckie Voivodeship. The Exhibition “Ekspedycja ‘88” was presented in the National Ethnographic Museum in Warsaw between 30.12.2017 and 08.02.2018.
