Muzeum Etnograficzne, Wrocław

Muzeum Etnograficzne is Wrocław’s museum of Lower Silesian folk art, founded in nineteen fifty-four. Its story begins a little earlier: in nineteen forty-eight, the State Museum created an ethnographic department that visitors could not yet enter. By nineteen fifty-three it was becoming a public department, first with an exhibition on the culture of Lower Silesian villages.

The museum initially worked from a wing of the Royal Palace. Its first long-term display, devoted to regional folk art, opened there in nineteen fifty-five; three years later, another explored everyday material life in the countryside. The collections reach from the seventeenth century to the present, preserving the work and domestic culture of rural Lower Silesia.

This is also a record of communities who made new homes here after the war. The museum presents the heritage of settlers from the former eastern borderlands, including Polesie, the Stanisławów and Tarnopol regions, as well as Lemkos and Greeks. In two thousand and four it moved to the former Summer Palace of the Bishops of Wrocław, and its first permanent exhibition in this building opened in May two thousand and six. Temporary exhibitions bring ethnographic collections here from around the world.