"LEGACY"
NEW PROGRAMME OF THE POLIN MUSEUM
The year 2020 has made us accustomed to surprises and uncertainty. We could not have imagined that these circumstances would bring us closer to the history and experience of Polish Jews, whose fascinating fate and achievements we had planned to present in 2021, - says Marta Dziewulska, press officer of the POLIN Museum.
The central figures of the programme "Legacy" are Jewish artists, thinkers and activists from Poland who changed the face of art, science, economy or politics in the XIX and XX centuries, full of changes and uncertainty. Their achievements are important for world civilisation, Polish or Jewish. Although many of them abandoned the world of tradition or emigrated from Poland, the fact of being brought up in a world of Polish-Jewish values had some influence on their life choices.
The programme and new "Legacy" gallery are dedicated to the cultural legacy of Polish Jews. Their achievements have become today our legacy and those of successive generations. The unique biographies reflect many turbulent historical events. The choice of the figures presented - twenty-six of them in the gallery - was not easy.
- We did not think of our selection as a list of names, but as a certain constellation, a collective portrait - explains Prof. Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, Chief Curator of the POLIN Museum's permanent exhibition. We wanted to shift the focus from the 'list' to show how these people's lives and careers enrich the history of Polish Jews and how that history influenced their lives. Our goal was to engage visitors in the broader history of Polish Jews, and the characters presented were intended to inspire them to delve deeper into it.
This constellation of characters creates a collective portrait of Polish Jews, in all its diversity, seen through the lives and achievements of individuals who are both unique and representative. Their lives revolved at the crossroads of several cultures, characterised by receptiveness to the world. They include, among others: Ida Kamińska (actress, director, director of Jewish theatres), Arnold Szyfman (director and founder of the Polish Theatre, director and playwright), Artur Rubinstein (pianist), Samuel Goldwyn (Hollywood film producer), Alexander Ford (director and filmmaker), I. B. Singer (writer, one of the most prominent Yiddish writers, Nobel Prize winner in literature), Bruno Schulz (writer and illustrator), Róża Luksemburg (socialist activist), Henryk Berlewi (painter, graphic artist), Dawid Ben Gurion (Israeli politician, first Prime Minister of Israel), Leopold Kronenberg (industrialist and philanthropist, "father" of railways in the Kingdom of Poland), Helena Rubinstein (founder of a cosmetics empire), Janusz Korczak (educator, doctor), Józef Rotblat (physicist, peace movement activist, Nobel Peace Prize winner) or Ludwik Zamenhof (linguist, founder of Esperanto).
In 2021, the POLIN Museum started a new programme devoted to the heritage of Jewish artists, thinkers and activists from Poland who changed the face of art, science, economy or politics in the XIX and XX centuries, full of uncertainties and changes. The highlight of the programme was the opening of a new part of the POLIN Museum's permanent exhibition "1000 years of the history of Polish Jews" - the "Legacy" gallery.
Polin. Museum of the History of Polish Jews