THE NEW SILESIAN MUSEUM IN KATOWICE: DISSIPATED IDEA, BLURRED MISSION

A critical assessment of the contemporary state of the new Silesian Museum in Katowice has been presented. In the Author’s view, the institution has currently reached an organizational crisis resulting from the process of losing its genuine idea rooted in its new seat and from the gradual blurring of the concept of its new mission. The reflections presented in the paper are based on data analysis: the official documents produced by the Silesian Museum in Katowice, media materials which comment on its activity, as well as on the participant observation from the perspective of an insider: of the Silesian community and of an institution’s academic affiliate. The ambitious and modern vision of the new Silesian Museum basing on the rehabilitation of the post-industrial area of the former ‘Katowice’ Coal Mine constitutes a chance to enjoy the ‘second life’ by the post-mining sites. The Katowice institution undertook the mission of creating space for the dialogue with the past and accomplishments of the present in order to better know Silesia, Poland, and Europe. Regrettably, inept actions of the decision-makers, chaos related to the position of the Museum’s Director, failed attempts to merge the Museum with the Upper Silesian Museum in Bytom, lack of understanding for the supranational, universal message related to the region’s history, have led to losing the genuine idea and blurring of the selected mission. The crisis that the Silesian Museum has been suffering is politically underpinned, and results from the use of museum institutions instrumentally by the authorities in order to fulfill their short-term goals. The decision makers of the Silesian Museum will in the near future have to choose between two operating formulas: they can either follow the conservative way, implying stagnation and becoming a closed ‘shrine-like museum’, or aspire to be a venue for the Silesian dialogue, turning into an open ‘museum-forum’.