Responsibility of Museums Towards Landscape: Discussion Based on Case Studies From Katowice, Kraków, and Warsaw

Abstract

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.