We invite you to read the interview with Michał Niezabitowski, PhD, director of the Museum of Kraków, Chair of Council of Museums and Sites of National Remembrance, President of the Association of Polish Museologists regarding the role of museums in the world which changes dynamically. It also concerns the influence of museums on building an international museum community and the way of creating collective memory by museums as well as involving nowadays audience in an intergenerational dialogue.

 You are the Chair of the Council of Museums and Sites of National Remembrance and the member of the International Council of Museums ICOM. In your opinion, in light of dynamically changing socio-political situation in the world, can Polish museums, especially historical ones, have the potential to inspire participants of events such as the EMYA2025 Conference and Ceremony? How do you perceive their role in building an international museum community?

Indeed, because of the functions I hold — the one in the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage or social functions, such as being the President of the Association of Polish Museologists, I believe I have a relatively wider perspective on what is happening in the museum sector in Poland, across Europe and to some extent, internationally.

I confirm that museums, as many other institutions, are facing dynamically and radically changing socio-political situation in the world. It perhaps creates a worls we have not yet known. Thus, it means that museums in some way can inspire participants of such events as the EMYA conference and ceremony for responding and adjusting to these changes we face. How do I see the role in building an international museum community? It seems to me that the key to what is happening in the world nowadays is on one hand, the polarization already known for us and defined in Poland, but also many other countries. It means that we are becoming an extremely strong participant in joint community — called “bubbles”. On the other hand, we begin to feel separated from the wider society. I suppose that the role of museums should be seen in one particular way. Museums must be institutions which develop such a canon of values, if possible, that will try to “stitch together” the polarized world. In other words, if museums won’t develop nowadays or managed in the canon of values — these basic values — which will be in any way shared in society, they will not fulfill their role. Is it possible? I don’t know. Does it mean that museums are at risk of losing their neutrality by expressing opinions in social issues? I would like to recall a slogan of museum from Amsterdam: Museum is not neutral. I think that museums cannot be neutral while facing the changing political situation if they recognize the threats related to demolishing of certain values. The process of resignation of being neutral by museum institutions may be extremely harsh for museums.

 The Thesaurus Cracoviensis branch of the Museum of Kraków, of which you are director, received a commendation within the EMYA contest in 2021. What did this award mean to you then? Are any conclusions from this experience also applicable in terms of the EMYA2025 conference in Białystok?

The Thesaurus Cracoviensis branch has received the commendation in the EMYA in 2021. This award meant a lot to us, as this branch in 2021 — if I remember it well — was one of the three branches and the biggest studio storage facility in Poland. On the one hand it was a storage facility, on the other — a place open to the public. Making the backstage of the Theatrus Magnus, which is a museum in this place, accessible to the public, became a fact. It was criticized by many people, also in terms of the threat of collections safety. Thesaurus has been functioning for eight years already. During that time we haven’t had any situation that would put our collections at risk. It strengthens us and — at the same time — confirms the validity of the chosen direction of the museum which is open, accessible, where the paradigm of functioning is the public, not collections. I don’t devalue the collections in any way. The collections are the sine qua non condition of functioning of the museum. The public is a paradigm. An open storage facility is a reversal of this paradigm. This award was a kind of authentication of our institution which, in my opinion, is more and more valid in 2025. Moreover, there are many new open storage facilities. I don’t like to make it sound selfish, but I am glad that so many museums started to follow the path which we have set in Poland.

 The EMYA2025 conference prioritises innovations and the best practices in the museum sector. Which new technologies or approaches of managing the museum you conducted in the Museum of Kraków, do you find especially worthy to share with the international community during this event?

Maybe I won’t talk about technologies. However, the museum went through a digital revolution in 2007-2009 and now, it has gained a very big grant entitled Digital Access to Heritage of Kraków, which enables conducting a “digital revolution 2.0”. Definitely, a reflection regarding a role of the AI should appear in the context of this grant. Nonetheless, in my opinion, a technological barrier that we cross is something essential. It cannot be discussed as something optional. We need to go through this path. If it comes to an approach of managing a museum, I think that the most relevant approach which I identify with, is the one of transition from a primacy of an operational management — being the most common approach in most of the museums — to a primacy of strategic management. Our strategy is based on four perspectives. We recognize our museum from the perspective of an owner as Kraków Municipality, from our own perspective and the perspective of the visitor. I think that different perspectives and setting long-term development forecasts for these perspectives, so a primacy of strategic management development, is worth recommending in museums with an operational management, not telling that it’s an innovation.

In your publications as well as your work, you emphasize the role of museums in building a collective memory. In your opinion, how such institutions can effectively tell about difficult historical topics, such as the ones initiated by the Sybir Memorial Museum in order to involve contemporary audience and create intergenerational dialogue? What is the role of museologists in this process?

Museologists have got a crucial role in this process under condition that they would agree to leave their position of the curator’s lecture pulpit and they become people who talk and listen equally. It means that on the one hand they are recipients of a content and on the other — they are able to interpret this content. In my opinion, a collective memory is the key to contemporariness as we have been discussing it since the 19th century. In the 1980s in the 20th century, Pierre Nora set extremely important new horizons in his voluminous study “Sites of Memory”. We understand that there is such an aspect influencing strongly on our approaches, our choices or our political preferences. It is a collective memory. It is a process of going through the past that happened some time ago, but still lives in us nowadays. As my master, prof. Jacek Purchla, says “memory is nothing more but the past that has the future”. By talking about memory, we talk about working through all things that happened in the past for the purposes of the future. Let me quote one more historian — Yuval Noah Harari — who stated that a historian’s task (I add: the museologist as well) is to make a human free from the past. There is no other way to make somebody free from the past, than to work through memory. When we mean the collectivity, museums need to work through memory in order to be open for the future. The easiest example of the way of working through and being open for the future are our Polish-German relations. They are still mostly used to awaken evil recollections, rather than to open us to harmony and an evolving future. One must not forget, but one must not live in the past either.

How can museologists be inspired to create institutions that will not only be “guards of the past”, but also active creators of the future?

I am afraid that I have already answered that question. It can be said: Museums can’t relive their past today, very often enshrined in their collections, but in pietistic, devotional or mindful mode. Of course, although we must treat monuments with the best care, we also must treat them in an evolving way — objects created in the past survived and now they are in our hands. We can make anything with them nowadays. We can learn a lot, but we also can — if you will pardon the expression — wake them up and force them to tell us a history. Storytelling is also a kind of therapeutic process. Telling stories from the past is an ingredient of the future, in accordance with a well known saying that the future started yesterday.