90/90. Around the Museum

90/90. Around the Museum

To mark the 90th birthday of Muzeum Warszawy, the museum reveals behind-the-scenes areas that are normally closed to visitors. As part of the project “90/90. Around the Museum”, the public will see how one of the capital’s most important cultural institutions works and get to know its team.

90 objects for 90 years

From 19 June 2026 to 1 February 2027, Muzeum Warszawy will present 90 things connected with its everyday operations. The story will be built from the most valuable objects as well as everyday items that seem ordinary but are essential to running a museum, architectural details, and even scents.

Anti-corrosion fabric, photo Tomek Kaczor

Visitors will see, among other things, a watering can used to maintain the right humidity level in exhibitions, a “klikacz” – a hand-held visitor counter, the basic tool of exhibition attendants, and an anti-corrosion fabric that protects Warsaw silverware from tarnishing.

These are emblems that present our museum in different dimensions, sometimes seriously, sometimes with a wink. The entire team of Muzeum Warszawy took part in choosing them. In this way we want to illustrate the history and our daily work – say the project’s curators.

A multi-voiced history of the museum

“90/90” is a story not only about objects, but also about the people who over the decades helped shape Muzeum Warszawy – from the first postwar employees to today’s team of nearly 300 people. Among them are Helena Wrona, the first museum cleaner, and Professor Janusz Durko, who led the institution for more than half a century.

We present a desk of special value to us – says Katarzyna Wagner, director of Muzeum Warszawy. For more than fifty years, successive museum directors have sat at it. The longest, thirty-one years, it was used by Professor Janusz Durko, who carried out his directorial mission for fifty-two years. That is why the desk is sometimes called the “Professor’s desk”. Decisions about reorganising the Museum and changing its name were made at it. The desk also accompanies us in everyday discussions, for example about the next fascinating exhibition plans.

The museum’s dogs, who have accompanied the team in daily work for years, will also be special participants in the project. In the Exhibition Organisation Department, Chałka watches over contract matters, and Myszek over the progress of installations. Luna and Bongo check how comfortable the carpets and exhibition floors are, and Rosa from the Laboratorium Miasta helps arrange the accompanying programme.

There will also be more sensory stories. One of the jubilee’s “heroes” has become the museum’s distinctive scent – a blend of wood, wax, dust and floor polish, evoking memories of school trips and old interiors.

Secret corridors and remarkable stairs

Museum stairs, photo Tomek Kaczor

The jubilee project will offer a new perspective on familiar elements of the museum space, including the wrought-iron arrows designed by Stanisław Żaryn during the postwar reconstruction. Visitors will learn how the museum’s storerooms and conservation workshops operate, and will also explore the labyrinth of museum corridors and passages hidden between tenement houses.

In the museum, then as now, everything gains meaning thanks to the public. The curators of “90/90” invite visitors not only to tour the exhibition but also to a shared birthday reflection: why does a city need a museum?

Not all jubilee stories will be told right away, however. Among museum corridors, closed doors and inconspicuous objects, traces of less obvious stories have been hidden – ones that for years only people working in the museum knew. Some of them will be revealed gradually, to encourage visitors to return and carefully uncover the further layers of this remarkable place.

90 years of Muzeum Warszawy

The museum grew out of an idea born at the beginning of the 20th century among members of the Society…