Lorentz, Stanisław: Guide to museums and collections in Poland (Warsaw, 1974)

cal and mineralogical museum was proposed. However,
these proposals did not materialize.
In the atmosphere created by the slogans of positivism
and "organic work", plans were formed and successfully
carried out for the creation of museums of industries and
crafts combined with institutes for vocational training of
young people and with scientific research institutes. These
museums were a modest Polish counterpart of such great
European institutions as the South Kensington Museum
in London, established in 1857, or the later museums of
crafts. The ideas professed by Ruskin also met with a cer-
tain response in Poiand, and his museum in Sheffield might
have somewhat influenced the concepts for the organiza-
tion of museums of industries and crafts in Poland.
In Cracow, Dr. Baraniecki established, in 1868, the Mu-
seum of Industry and Crafts for which, in the years
1864—67, he had bought, in Engiand and France, some 5,000
exhibits pertaining to industry and technology. The museum
organized higher educational courses for women, vocation
courses in handicrafts and workshops; educational activity
also took the form of exhibitions and lectures. After the last
war, this museum was incorporated into the National Mu-
seum in Cracow, becoming a branch cf the latter.
In Warsaw, a public Museum of Industry and Agriculture
was established in 1875. It had natural history and indus-
trial collections, exhibits of artistic handicrafts, and a very
rich ethnographic and ethnological collection — all of which
was destroyed by fire during the siege of Warsaw in 1939.
The most important part of the Museum's activities con-
sisted in spreading professional knowledge. It maintained
a school of crafts and industry, organized various specialized
courses, exhibitions and lectures. The Museum also estab-
lished scientific research laboratories in chemistry, physics,
meteorology, geology, anthropology, and ethnology. It was
in the Museum's physics laboratory, organized in 1887, that
Maria Sklodowska, later known as Madame Curie, began
her studies. The Museum also had an archaeological col-
lection.
The activities of the Museum of Industry and Agriculture
were complemented by the Museum of Crafts and Applied
Arts in Warsaw which set up its own collection and, from
1891 to the outbreak of World War II, conducted vocational
and drawing courses as well as art appreciation courses.
The collection and the library were destroyed during the
siege of Warsaw in 1939.
In the atmosphere of growing interest in folk culture
(which was also reflected in literature and the fine arts),
the Museum of Polish Ethnography was established in Cra-
cow in 1904 as a public institution and opened in 1911.
The private collection of the distinguished ethnographer
Seweryn Udziela constituted its core. After World War I,
the Museum was housed in the Wawel Castle in Cracow,
and at present it is located in the Renaissance town hall
in the Wolnica district of Cracow. The Museum is carrying
on lively exhibition, publishing and collecting activities.
The organization which began to arrange art and historical
exhibitions in Warsaw before World War I, was the Society
for the Preservation of Monuments of the Past. Its exhibi-
tions were mainly retrospective while those of the Society