JÓZEF PIOTROWICZ, PhD HISTORIAN, MUSEUM CURATOR (1930-2014)

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JÓZEF PIOTROWICZ, PhD HISTORIAN, MUSEUM CURATOR (1930-2014)

Journal Title: Muzealnictwo - Year 2015, Vol 56, Issue

Abstract

Józef Piotrowicz, humanities scholar, historian and museum curator, died on 2 May, 2014. Born in Bochnia and educated in a milieu of outstanding Cracow historians, he graduated from the department of history and philology at the Jagiellonian University in 1954. After eight years of work at the National Museum in Krakow as a researcher at the Czartoryski Library, in 1962 he transferred to the Cracow Saltworks Museum, which was then extending its academic departments. Piotrowicz was Director of the History Department. Thus, he combined his passion for research with exhibition-oriented activities.Piotrowicz’s research focused primarily on the origins of salt mining, its periodisation, normative acts, as well as the significance of medieval salt conferrals to convents and other churchinstitutions in Poland. Moreover, the questions of European salt mining and Wieliczka’s and Bochnia’s local history fell also within his scope of interests. He organised numerous academic sessions, spoke at international conferences of European mining historians and was a frequent visitor to mining museums. Piotrowicz was the creator of the Museum’s first permanent exhibitions, both the underground display and the Saltworks Castle collections, as well as a number of temporary exhibitions, including those presented abroad. He contributed greatly to the process of justifying why the Wieliczka Salt Mine should be included on the UNESCO World Heritage list, oversaw the reconstruction and functioning of the Saltworks Castle complex, and authored the academic commentary to the edition of the Cracow saltworks’ description from 1518, a text recently added to the first Polish National List of UNESCO’s Memory of the World Programme. An excellent and erudite scholar and populariser, Piotrowicz was able to establish contact with virtually anybody, regardless of their professional or social background; conversations with him were true intellectual adventures. His passion was contagious.

Authors and Affiliations

Małgorzata Międzobrodzka

Keywords

The Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago and its Influence on the Development of America’s Science and Technology Museums

EP ID EP62028
DOI -
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