Praca zbiorowa, The Things of Warsaw

"Focusing on things themselves and on their own biographies is far from easy. It may also - similarly to this book - appear baffling. Objects from the past, unharnessed for the purpose of being actors in (someone else's) history, often seem lost. Left behind by our predecessors and ancestors, they have been gathered in the museum, detached from their original environment, owner and makers, from the wallls, sideboard shelves and closets' recesses. We might as well attempt to reconstruct their old life - lay museum tables with silverware and adorn them with (artificial) fruit, place wax figures of people holding old-time tools whose function is difficult to decipher. what a lifeless theatre that would be! Instead we have deceided that it is wotrh giving things a space which will allow visitors to concentrate solely on them and ask questions about what they really are in teh museum - stored, amintained, exhibited and, above all, treasured. What was their role, why such a form was chosen for them? What historic events did they participate in? Whom did they assist in what circimstances? What historic processes they might have influenced? Whose plans did they facilitate or perhaps impede? The histories of things reveal a multi-threaded history of the city."

Jarosław Trybuś

Chief Curator of the Core Exhibition