Museum Management WH-MU-I-3-ZarzMuzC-L

The crisis of the humanities is a challenge of our times. One of its symptoms is the misfunction of understanding historical experience and its significant role in building a national and cultural community. This in turn leads to underestimating the role of the longue durée of culture as a system of goods and values, which stabilize human individuality as well as the collective in a world predominantly characterized by its changeability. The domination of management models which limit the duration of executive positions is part of this challenge. A routinely recurring exchange of staff, while understandable with regard to efficient management, collides with a long-term perspective of culture.
These past decades have shown an extensive evolution of cultural institutions in Poland. The following aspects are part of this development—including the realm of museums and related institutions:
• an increase in the number of museums,
• an increasing public interest in museums,
• an increase in financial outlays, which show in investments such as The Polish History Museum, Museum of the History of Polish Jews POLIN, The Museum of the Second World War, thus introducing the category of the so-called narrative museum into the museum sector,
• an increasing interest within society to found so-called private museums as a means to commemorate local culture.
The objective of this class is to impart knowledge about management methods and mechanisms with a particular emphasis on the specifics regarding cultural heritage (including material as well as immaterial heritage collected in museums). The class topics will include:
• the management process;
• managing cultural heritage in museums through history:
- the period of occupation (before 1918),
- The Second Polish Republic (1918–1939),
- Second World War (1939–1945),
- the period following the Second World War (up until 1989).
• Managing cultural heritage in museums—a task for the government and its institutions:
- the system of applicable legislation (the Constitution of the Republic of Poland, legislation applicable to museums),
- the competences of the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage of the Republic of Poland, further government bodies and specialized cultural institutions concerned with the protection of heritage in museums,
- financial sources for culture—forms of patronage by the state (current subsidies and investments for cultural institutions from organizers, long-term public programs, The Fund for the Promotion of Culture), the role of the local governments, funding from so-called European programs, grants (the Ministry of Education and Higher Education, the National Science Centre, the National Centre for Research and Development).
• management challenges based on the example of Polish museums after 1989:
- the museums within the management system for cultural heritage,
- the traditional roles of the museum vs. its mission in society,
- models of financing vs. the principal of not expecting to make profit,
- crisis management and management in times of change facing the challenges of a pandemic.