THE NEW SILESIAN MUSEUM IN KATOWICE: DISSIPATED IDEA, BLURRED MISSION

A critical assessment of the contemporary stateof the new Silesian Museum in Katowice has been presented.In the Author’s view, the institution has currently reachedan organizational crisis resulting from the process of losingits genuine idea rooted in its new seat and from the gradualblurring of the concept of its new mission.The reflections presented in the paper are based on dataanalysis: the official documents produced by the SilesianMuseum in Katowice, media materials which comment onits activity, as well as on the participant observation fromthe perspective of an insider: of the Silesian community andof an institution’s academic affiliate.The ambitious and modern vision of the new SilesianMuseum basing on the rehabilitation of the post-industrialarea of the former ‘Katowice’ Coal Mine constitutes a chanceto enjoy the ‘second life’ by the post-mining sites. TheKatowice institution undertook the mission of creatingspace for the dialogue with the past and accomplishmentsof the present in order to better know Silesia, Poland, andEurope . Regrettably, inept actions of the decision-makers,chaos related to the position of the Museum’s Director, failedattempts to merge the Museum with the Upper SilesianMuseum in Bytom, lack of understanding for the supranational,universal message related to the region’s history, haveled to losing the genuine idea and blurring of the selectedmission. The crisis that the Silesian Museum has been sufferingis politically underpinned, and results from the useof museum institutions instrumentally by the authorities inorder to fulfill their short-term goals.The decision makers of the Silesian Museum will in thenear future have to choose between two operating formulas:they can either follow the conservative way, implyingstagnation and becoming a closed ‘shrine-like museum’, oraspire to be a venue for the Silesian dialogue, turning intoan open ‘museum-forum’.