MIECZYSŁAW TRETER, CONTEMPORARY MUSEUMS

In 2019, the National Institute for Museums andPublic Collections in cooperation with the Państwowy InstytutWydawniczy published the 1917 book by Mieczysław Tretertitled Contemporary Museums as the first volume in theMonuments of Polish Museology Series. The study consists oftwo parts originally released in ‘Muzeum Polskie’ published byTreter in Kiev; it was an ephemeral periodical associated withthe Society for the Protection of Monuments of the Past, activepredominantly in the Kingdom of Poland, but also boastingnumerous branches in Polish communities throughout Russia.The Author opens the first part of a theoretical format witha synthesized presentation of the genesis of the museuminstitution (also on the territory of the Polish-LithuanianCommonwealth), to later follow to its analysis in view of itscollecting and displaying character, classification according tothe typical factual areas it covers, chronology, and territory(general natural history museums, general history ones,technological ones, ethnographic ones, historical-social ones,historical-artistic ones); moreover, he tackles questions likea museum exhibition, management, a museum building.In Treter’s view the museum’s mission is not to providesimple entertainment, neither is it to create autonomousbeauty (realm of art), but it is of a strictly scientific character,meant to serve science and its promotion, though throughthis museums become elitist: by serving mainly science,they cannot provide entertainment and excitement to everyamateur, neither are they, as such, works of art to whichpurely aesthetical criteria could be applied.The second part of Treter’s study is an extensive outline ofthe situation of Polish museums on the eve of WWI, in a wayovershadowed by the first congress of Polish museologists,and in the perspective of the ‘museum world’ of the SecondPolish Republic. It is an outline for the monograph on Polishmuseums, a kind of a report on their condition as in 1914with some references to later years. Through this it becomesas if a closure of the first period of their history, which theAuthor, when involved in writing his study, could obviouslyonly instinctively anticipate.