The paper examines the impact and influence of the Peter Vergo’s book The New Museology and the ways it colonized the knowledge already existing outside United Kingdom. It discusses the concepts that existed before the 1989 book following the development of La Nouvelle Museologie and ecomuseums, ideas spread at conferences, symposiums and round tables, diverse declarations and resolutions. Also, beyond the New there is the narrative of museology itself and its past in the centers outside the “traditional” centers of colonial powers. The paper follows the early development of ideas in East Europe and Poland and the practical solutions recently developed in the country in a relation to British publication.

According to the Resolution no 1, adopted by the ICOM’s General Assembly in 2016, “Museums have a particular responsibility towards the landscape that surrounds them, urban or rural”. And thus, they should “manage buildings and sites of cultural landscape as ‘extended museums’, offering enhanced protection and accessibility to such heritage in closed relationship with communities”. This document arises from new museology thinking developed in the 1970s and 1980s. In the article we discuss this newly “codified”responsibility illustrated with an example of four Polish museums – Muzeum Śląskie in Katowice, Museum of King Jan III’s Palace at Wilanow, Muzeum Podgorza and Ethnographic Museum in Krakow –with intention to examine strategies and positions museums adopt, and contexts that determining those actions. We conclude that museums must play active parts in societies and take actions regarding changes in the landscape that surrounds them. However, the ICOM resolution is only a signpost, and broader recognition of museums as subjects of discussion on urban and rural space is required.

The article focuses on art activism directed to museums and their sponsorship relationship with the oil industry. It considers the form and content of protests undertaken by art collectives such as Liberate Tate, BP, or not BP?, and Fossil Free Culture NL. The author recognizes the goals of activists in undermining the reality of capitalocene. She frames this form of protest with the term “unauthorized curating”, which she derives from the analysis of participation paradigm and the definition of curatorial practice proposed by Marta Kosińska. Finally, she analyzes the strategy undertaken in art of protest.