ROMAN TUBAJA (1944–2021)

On 17 April 2021, Roman Tubaja, an ethnographer, museum curator, and a long-standing director of the Ethnographic Museum in Toruń named after Maria Znamierowska-Prüffer, passed away. Born on 16 February 1944 in Warlubie, Kociewie, he graduated in ethnography from the Jagiellonian University in 1966. As of 1967, he worked at the Ethnographic Museum in Toruń continuing there throughout all his career, and moving up the entire promotion ladder. Having been appointed Head of the Folk Architecture Department in 1970, in 1978, he was promoted to become Deputy Director for Research, while on 1 April 1980, he was assigned to become Director of the Ethnographic Museum in Toruń, which he remained for almost 30 years until his retirement in 2009. An excellent logistician, during his term of office he consistently extended and modernized the Museum, doubling the volume of the collection; furthermore, he held team stationary ethnographic research in the regions forming Gdansk Pomerania. Roman Tubaja’s academic output is made up of almost 40 papers tackling folk architecture as well as history and theory of ethnographic museology, of conceptual works, and of numerous conference speeches. He also authored several museum exhibitions.