2017 was the year of the 25th anniversary of Wroclaw University Museum, which is located in the main baroque university building, managing the historic buildings connected to the activities of the Wroclaw alma mater.

The Museum was founded on 6th August 1992 as the result of converting the Museum Collection Department of the Archives of the University of Wroclaw into an independent administration unit. In the beginning, the Museum consisted of historic interior rooms open to the public, i.e. The Aula Leopoldina and the so-called Ceasar’s Stairs, and since 1997 the Oratorium Marianum as well. In the following years, the Mathematical Tower was opened for visitors (in 2000), and in 2002 the permanent exhibition was placed in the Roman Longchamps de Bérier’s Room. The breakthrough came along with the 200th anniversary of the University of Wroclaw (2011), when the space of the permanent exhibition was extended by adding Stefan Banach’s Room and the adjoining hall, while the third room called Under the Pillar was allotted for temporary exhibitions. All the rooms have been renovated and re-arranged. The new scenario takes into account the complex 300-year history of the University, from the Jesuit Academy Leopoldina founded in 1702, the era of Universitas Litterarum Wratislaviensis (1811–1911) and the Silesian University of Frederick Wilhelm (1911–1945), to the after-war period with special regard to the pioneer era (1945–1948) and the ‘founding capital’ from the Lviv scientists.

In this paper, the author discusses the role and tasks of university museums based on the experiences of the Cracow University of Technology founded in 2004. The issue identified in the title, regarding the participation of ideas and objects in the activity of university museums has been presented from the angle of cultural anthropology which, aside from material and non-material culture, distinguishes social culture as well. This is the field where both the university’s and the museum’s educational and scientific initiatives are carried out, which requires merging the missions of both institutions. Applying the category of ‘science’ to the cultural background allows the adjustment of the university museum’s profile and its activity capabilities to many different types of universities.

The University of Agriculture is a technical school. Our Professors have unquestionable successes in the fields of sciences they specialise in. What is worth mentioning, is that some of them also show great talents in the area of humanities as authors of literary works, both poetry and prose. This paper discusses the profiles of three deceased ‘technical humanities scientists’: Professor Stefan Myczkowski, PhD., Professor Leszek Czuchajowski, PhD. Eng., and Professor Jan Koteja, PhD. Eng. All three professors represented the World War II generation: “the dark night of occupation”3 was the time of Myczkowski and Czuchajowski’s youth and Koteja’s young adolescence. Some of them did not live through the end of the Polish People’s Republic to see the political transformation.

The question of the ownership of minerals is not directly regulated by Polish law. Legislators have not sufficiently dealt with this issue, which has resulted in several problems due to the lack of regulations on the question of finding and possessing minerals. In addition, there are many collectors and meteorite hunters among mineral owners, who operate in a semi-formal sector. This situation raises many questions, e.g. who should be considered the owner of a found object, or should it be legal to search for and extract minerals without obtaining a permission or license, and how should the sale of minerals be regulated. In order to answer these questions, I will discuss the number of ambiguities in the field of legal regulations of mineral owners’ rights. I will present the main problems related to the question of mineral ownership in terms of legal regulations, and talk through suggested solutions.

A long-standing process of establishing a museum at the University of Technology in Bialystok was successfully concluded in November 2017, when the History Centre of the University of Technology in Bialystok was founded. The History Centre is a place collecting exhibits relevant to the university’s history and technological development throughout the years. Another purpose of the Centre is to enhance the University’s prestige by various didactic and promotional activities.

This paper takes up the subject of relationships between a historic building and a museum entity, discussing the activity of the Museum of the Cracow University of Technology located in the 19th century prison building of the Austro-Hungarian military barracks, and talking through the way in which the place’s heritage has been shaping the profile of the Museum’s activity, influencing its image, the subjects of temporary exhibitions, and the type of visitors. The paper also makes an attempt to answer the following questions:

What are the consequences of the fact that the museum is located in a historic building?

What are the results of the changes to the functions of the building originally designed for an entirely different role than that of a public service facility serving as a space for the exhibition of a museum collection?

Additionally, the article presents the historic building as an element of the cultural landscape of military fortification architecture, which is a part of the European cultural heritage.

This paper discusses the question of building the awareness and strengthening the positive image of the brand of the Museum of Opole University in the local community. The main goal is to become familiar with the process of evoking in visitors’ minds certain associations and emotions unambiguously identified with a positive image of the brand of the Museum and the University. A separate section has been dedicated to the analysis of the relationship between the historic building of the Collegium Maius, where the Museum is located, and the exhibition space endowed with the proper graphic layout referring to the history and culturally active role of the University. The paper discusses the forms and principles of the cooperation between the Museum and the local society and the academic environment. The Museum of the Opole University has been presented as a space of the exposition of the brand heritage, which is a part of the historical, artistic, scientific, cultural, and business value, in order to enhance its emotional influence and its role in the integration process within the local society.

opportunity to study major specimens from the past, bringing us closer to understanding these fundamental issues. Until the 1980s, studying objects from museums’ collections, concerning human, plant or animal evolutionary development, were conducted using methods based on anatomical or morphological findings. However, the results were often inaccurate and of solely theoretical value. The use of genetic methods including DNA analysis of museum objects has brought new perspectives for historians, archaeologist, anthropologists, and zoologists.  

The history of medicine presented in the source literature is not particularly interesting for today’s young adolescents. Showing it in a more practical and tangible way brings an excellent opportunity to spread historical knowledge. Medical museum studies – a specialist and still developing domain – serves this purpose very well. The results of scientific research performed before World War II – which do not meet ethical standards from today’s point of view – explored the nature of different pathologies of human body, and were preserved as formaldehyde preparations and stored in medical museums. The scientific progress in molecular biology which allows scientists to conduct genetic research of old and decayed exhibits, gives them a chance to explore mysteries of diseases and evolution of pathogens, essential to verify historical data.

In the present era of unprecedented world musealisation, university museums also play a significant part in the process. Great possibilities offered by the digital technologies tempt us to build exhibitions with nothing else. The author of this paper points out the canonical foundations of the concept of museum, where the original object – a musealium – serves as a basic ‘text’ of the exhibitions held by the institution and indicates that musealia are not only about form and function, but mostly about their semantic and symbolic content which evokes various feelings and emotions. It is crucial to reach them by building a collection consisted of objects. This art of building a collection is a complex process, hence its main principles have been discussed in this paper. Moreover, the author claims that specific museums should underpin the purpose of their existence by carrying out activities in such fields as marketing, the university, identity formation, university cultural heritage management, as well as giving the space for a debate about the university’s history and future. 

National heritage embodies cultural and historic values as well as science and technology. Preservation, protection and popularisation of the data on scientific heritage is important not only from the angle of the development of national identity, but as an element of promoting science nationwide and abroad. The primary question is the preservation of the objects documenting this development, such as scientific tools, natural and medical preparations, chemical and pharmaceutical objects, as well as documents and photographs. The case of France is an excellent example to follow, especially when it comes to the concept and range of creating national digital databases. The Ministry of Culture (ASEISTE base and domain) and the Ministry of Science (PATSTEC base and domain) are involved at the organisational and financial level.

While creating Polish databases, it is necessary to adjust them to local conditions. Databases should be of informational, not register use, merging interdisciplinary data regarding objects retained in museums and institutes’ collections and used in test laboratories and didactics. It is crucial to work out the transparent terminology and ways of record indexation.

University museums in Poland nowadays include about 70 entities operating within the structures of universities. Many of them have been established in recent years, frequently they have quite low budgets, insufficient staff, modest expertise and premises. The paper includes several propositions how such museums’ operations could use the broadly defined academic community to draw professional knowledge and get support in everyday word, gathering collections and building prestige. The academic community is defined as the entire community of the university: current administration staff, faculty, retired staff and faculty, their families, students, but also inhabitants of the neighbourhood. University museums, like no others, have the unique scientific support of science laboratories (to be used for conservation works), scientific staff (research on art and science history) or specialist IT staff (stock-taking and digitalisation of collections). Using this potential should be made a part of the museums’ development strategies. Our university museums are the only ones to have unique access to a pool of creative activities generated by students. In most university museums students are not sufficiently involved by museum staff. This group of young people, changing every five years, and their activities may fill the museums’ exposition space and surroundings. Students make a constant and endless asset – it is up to museum staff how it will be used for the needs related to building institutional image.

The specific character of this potential is a unique basis to build university museums as modern  institutions – open to dialogue, education, popularisation of science and art, open to learning and spreading the latest achievements on the local and global levels.

The Geological Museum of the University of Szczecin was founded in 1994. For 24 years the Museum has changed its location several times and last year it finally moved to the Natural Sciences Education and Research Centre of the University of Szczecin. The Museum’s collection holds over 4320 exhibits, including such specimens as minerals, rocks, fossils, meteorites, and sand samples. The most valuable scientific collections are: the specimens of one of the oldest rocks in the world, originated from the Isua Greenstone Belt, Oligocene sand concretions, the so-called Szczecin balls (Germ. Stettiner Kugeln), the collection of minerals with the fluorescence phenomenon on display, and the collection of sand samples from various beaches and deserts. The Museum serves its primary educational function and organises many events, such as geological workshops, trainings, and others.

The Museum of the Botanic Garden, the Jagiellonian University in Cracow (the oldest Polish botanical garden founded in 1783) holds materials illustrating scientific and didactic activity of the Cracow botanical centre. In 1983, exhibition was arranged in the Garden, on the first floor of the Śniadecki Collegium. The botanical collection includes dendrological and carpological (fruits and seeds) specimens, as well as plant organs stored in liquid, gathered in the Botanic Garden or during field research of botanists in Africa, America, Asia, Europe, and the polar regions, mostly in the 19–21th centuries. Among the largest, there is the collection of Marian Raciborski (1863–1917) (Java, Indonesia, 1896–1900). Additionally, the Museum holds various materials about the history of botany. The subject of the exhibition is the history of the Cracow Botanic Garden and various tropical specimens from Africa, and Asia, as well as plants and lichens from the polar regions. Temporary exhibitions are mostly devoted to the plant motives in art. The research program focuses on the history of botany, ethnobotany, as well as the question of the relations between nature, science, and culture. Throughout the year the Museum is open to students, while normal visitors may access the Museum in time the Botanic Garden is open i.e. from April to October.

The examination presented in this paper has been conducted in order to identify the drawing tools used by Szymon Czechowicz (1689‒1775) ‒ the most significant Polish painter of the late baroque period. 12 artists’ works from the collection of the Jagiellonian University Museum have been examined, using such non-invasive methods as Raman spectroscopy (RS), X-ray fluorescence (XRF), Infrared False Colour photography (IRFC), and near infrared spectroscopy (NIR). These methods allowed the analysis of the chemical composition of the drawings’ lines, as well as the identification of the drawing tools: sanguine and red pencils containing red ochre, red lead and white filling such as chalk and gypsum, sepia, graphite pencils, charcoal, and black pencils containing animal black. The materials identified are typical for the 18th century and the geographical areas of the artist activities. The results of the examination can be used as a verification criterion of the authenticity of other sketches attributed to the artist.

The University Museum in Torun holds the 18th century painting depicting the allegory of life, attributed to the German artist Christian Wilhelm Ernest Dietrich (1712–1774). The work forms part of Professor Wieslaw Litewski’s collection of pre-modern art, bequeathed to the Nicolaus Copernicus University in Torun in 2000. This paper discusses the identification of technology and painting technique of the work, based on a complex technological and restoration examination. The materials used in the painting process and the moulding techniquehave been identified and described, along  with presenting the historical informationand description of the iconography of the motif of life’s evanescence. The paint technique has been shown in the context of the rules of Dutch painting, discussed by Teodor Turquet de Mayerne in the manuscript Pictoria Sculptoria et qua subalternarum atrium spectantia, 1620–1649, and the Gerard de Lairesse’s treatise Het groot schilderboeck published in 1707. The examination results serve as a source material complementing the knowledge on the 18th century painting techniques.   

The tradition of generous endowments for Almae Matris is as old as university itself. Some donations can be admired at the Jagiellonian University Museum. One of the insignia of the University’s authorities has very interesting origins. The rector’s chain of 1900 was donated by graduates of the “former Universität Dorpat” (currently University of Tartu) during the official celebration of the 500th anniversary of reinstatement of the Jagiellonian University. The concept of the chain and the interesting iconography originated from the Polish-Livonian historiographer Gustaw Manteuffel. So far, the history of this artefact has not been explored in depth. In the 19th century Galicia was perceived as the refuge of Polishness and Kraków was the most important sanctuary of national heritage. Poles from Universität Dorpat felt a bond with the Polish community and the chain was a symbol to express their patriotism. The donation from Dorpat delegation included several elements: tributary letter (now lost), tissue (never found) covering the masterpiece box containing the chain, and then the main gift itself: the chain. Gustaw Manteuffel left a symbolic “signature” on this work. At Princes Czartoryski Library in Kraków, the Author has found previously unknown correspondence between Manteuffel and Lubomir Gadon – parts of it concern creation of the chain.

The Museum holds a number of paintings and drawings by Stanislaw Wyspianski. As well as that, there are two interesting functional objects complementing the collection: a quill pen used by the poet to write ‘November Night’ finished in 1904, secured with great care by Tadeusz Estreicher, and a casket made by Wyspianski. The pen used by the poet is of sentimental value only, although the casket, which he made for his wife, has kept its practical value, and proves the artist’s interest in the craftwork.

Polish museology has suffered a severe loss. The Polish Museum in Muri, also known as the Museum for the Polish Struggle for Freedom, has ceased to exist. It was the second largest Polish museum in Switzerland after the museum at Rapperswil Castle. On 11 November 2017, the Hermann Historica GmbH antique shop from Munich conducted the 75th live auction of most of the artefacts collected by Zygmunt Stankiewicz at the castle in Muri (Katalog Hermann Historica 75. Auktion: Museum zum Freiheitskampf des polnischen Volkes – die Sammlung Z. Stankiewicz, 11. Nov. 2017, lot 4801–4977). About 600 items grouped into 177 listings were put up for sale. Among them, there was a portrait of John III Sobieski from about 1677, Polish weapons and arms from the 17th–18th centuries, including the sabre from the National Museum in Lvov, over 50 maps of Polish territories from the 16th–17th centuries, 3 plans and 6 former views of Polish cities, 60 historical graphics, several hundred coins and medals, several dozens of badges and decorations, uniforms and military equipment, as well as 3 standards. On the next day of the auction, 14 November, a further part of the collection was sold, including the mitra ornata donated to the founder of the museum by John Paul II (Katalog Hermann Historica 75. Auktion: Orden und militärhistorische Sammlungsstücke aus aller Welt, 11. & 14. & 15. Nov. 2017, lot 5725).

Zygmunt Stankiewicz (1914–2010) took part in the defensive war in September 1939. Then he fought in the Polish Armed Forces in the West, in the 6th Border Infantry Rifle Regiment, part of the 2nd Rifle Division. Pushed together with the division to the Swiss border, he crossed it and was interned in the Helvetic Republic, where he remained permanently. After the war, he was the first director of the Polish Museum in Rapperswil. He founded the Polish Museum in 1955. He cumulated his collections by travelling around the world. He searched European antique shops and participated in auctions. He received numerous donations.

He opened the museum on 3 May 1984. The collections included iconography, cartography, numismatics and medals, phaleristics and militaria, all historical memorabilia, including diplomas, photographs and archives. They were to illustrate the whole history of the nation and the Polish state from the adoption of Christianity in 966 until the emergence of the Solidarity movement.

The 2017 auction led to the sale of the collections of the Polish Museum in Muri. This was against the will of the founder of the museum. Ethical doubts are aroused by the auctioning of those objects that Zygmunt Stankiewicz received as donations to enrich the museum’s collections, as a national treasury made available to the public, and not only a private collection. These included the portrait of Sobieski and the papal mitre, as well as uniforms and accoutrement of his friends from the war. The only optimistic effect of the rotation of the wheel of Fortune constituted the conviction that most of these objects returned to Poland.

In trubute to the blessed memory of Professor Karolina Lanckorońska.

The iconographic analysis of both portraits in the context of the adopted nomenclature and interpretation of the presentation, the recognition of the symbolic meaning and the anthropological type of portraits give the basis for clarifying the subject. The determination of racial affiliation attests the previous provenance.

The formal features of the composition and the fact of the secondary cutting of the boards do not speak in favour of the pendant of both paintings. Other properties and conditions – much more important than the format of the canvas, the scale of figures and their mutual orientation – prove the connection between both portraits from the moment of their creation. They are the typological features of portrayed persons, the symbolic meaning of images and the context of their realisation. These disqualify the assignment of the portraits to the tronie type. The portraits are, therefore, a pair, although they were created separately.

In the 17th century they belonged to John III Sobieski. They were part of the royal collection of paintings and decorated the king’s bedroom in Wilanów Palace. They were recorded in the General Inventory of 1696. In this inventory, the title of the male portrait – “portrait of a Portuguese rabbi” – draws attention.

The anthropological analysis confirms that both portraits show representatives of Sephardic Jews. This group originally lived in Spain, Portugal and Morocco. They came to

Poland in large numbers only in the 17th century. They differed physically from the Ashkenazi Jews who had arrived in Central Europe earlier. In 1696, he was accurately portrayed as the “Portuguese rabbi” because he presents features typical of the Sephardic population. The name given in the inventory from 1696 corresponded to the image identified in the portrait. It provides convincing evidence that John III Sobieski had both of the Rembrandt portraits in his collection.

The man in a portrait is probably about 60 years old. The girl is probably 15–17 years old. Their filiation is obvious. Several similarities clearly indicate a close family relationship. The determined age difference of 45 years does not preclude paternity.

Since both images were never separated, they can be described as the Sephardic Rabbi in the lectern and the Jewess in the beret (Rabbi’s daughter), which would consider the record tradition in the inventory from 1696 and would be a fairly close reference to the defined topic.

The blurring borders and disappearance of barriers in the international trade in goods leads to the phenomenon called globalisation of trade which includes the international and internal art market, too. With approval of various legal provisions, this market is controlled and limited not only in particular states, but also in the European Union. Parallelly, an important role is played by traditional general regulations, for instance those concerning liquidating results of wartime looting or “regular” theft committed in the time of peace. Finally, international cooperation is initiated in response to phenomena which are especially negative for the heritage in a particular country or countries.

Museums take active part in the art market by purchasing works and accepting donations or participating in expositions abroad. In other words, they take active part in the international “traffic” of art goods, which involves their transfer from one country to another, either in the case of trade or temporary presentation at expositions. Thus, they are exposed to all risks related to the fact that on the market there is a growing number of objects burdened with variable legal flaws. These may be stolen objects or objects from illegal excavations, frequently considered as theft, too, but also objects from organised robbery, either from old times (even WWII) or modern situations, for instance from Iraqi or Syrian territories which were occupied by the organisation called Islamic State. Origins of illegally exported goods are analysed in the same context, too, i.e. goods transferred abroad against respective binding provisions, if there are such provisions in the country in question.

As highlighted in the title, the Author analyses these issues from the point of view of museums, indicating potential risks and suggesting what can be done to avoid negative consequences.