ADRIAN BARANIECKI – PREKURSOR POLSKIEGO MUZEALNICTWA PRZEMYSŁOWEGO

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ADRIAN BARANIECKI – PREKURSOR POLSKIEGO MUZEALNICTWA PRZEMYSŁOWEGO

Journal Title: Muzealnictwo - Year 2016, Vol 57, Issue

Abstract

Adrian Baraniecki (1827–1891), a doctor, a social activist by profession; a museum professional by passion. During the January Uprising of 1863, he was a major figure in the patriotic movement in the Podolia Governorate. Threatened with arrest, he moved to Paris, and in 1864 reached England. Probably as a result of his fascination with industrial culture, Baraniecki began working on a concept of an industrial museum on Polish soil. This idea was closely linked with the Positivist programme of „organic work” and „grassroots work”. He concluded that the only way to rebuild society after the failure of the Uprising was to develop its manufacturing capacity (craft and industry) and education. In 1868 he came to Cracow and brought his assembled collection with him. The Technical and Industrial Museum in Cracow he set up was the first in Poland. It was established by a resolution of the City Council on 4 June 1868 under which the city received the collections he had offered. According to the museum’s name, its main statutory target was to develop industry with particular attention to technical and artistic crafts, i.e. reviving the craft and industrial circles in Cracow, and in a broader perspective within Galicia. Thanks to his numerous private contacts and the way he organised the acquisition of gifts from the society, the collection of the museum was soon enlarged. The museum consisted of two departments, industrial and ethnographic; it also had a workshop of plaster casts. Moreover, it organised many exhibitions and prepared many publications. Based on the collections he amassed, Braniecki initiated a broad and varied range of educational activities at his own cost. According to his concept, exhibiting was to be one among many means of achieving the goal he had set, namely the scientific, economic and artistic strengthening of the Polish nation. Braniecki’s establishment was not only a museum but also a school, a professional training centre, and a place for shaping and exchanging ideas. Baraniecki was a precursor of educating women at the higher level in Poland. He initiated Higher Courses for Women at the Technical and Industrial Museum, one of the most important cultural institutions in Cracow at the turn of the 20th century, which was very modern and useful for the public. The memory of his distinguished social activism remained in the awareness of Cracow’s inhabitants as long as the institution he had established operated. In 1950 the museum was nationalised and liquidated, and his collections were dispersed.<br/><br/>

Authors and Affiliations

Piotr Hapanowicz

Keywords

EP ID EP186971
DOI 10.5604/04641086.1198511
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