Magdalena Wróblewska, PhD, is an art historian and museologist, interested in decoloniality. Director of the State Ethnographic Museum in Warsaw, assistant professor at the Faculty of “Artes Liberales” at the University of Warsaw. She completed a post-doc fellowship at the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz- Max-Planck-Institut and the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin (2012-14). From 2015 to 2021 she directed research at the Museum of Warsaw. The project she led "Where do Varsovians come from? Migrations to Warsaw in the 14th-21st centuries" was awarded the Sybilla award by the National Institute for Museums and Public Collections (2016). As part of the City Museums and Multiple Colonial Pasts project in the ECHOES project (H2020), she published the book "Practicing Decoloniality in Museums: A Guide with Global Examples" (Amsterdam University Press, 2021) with C. Ariese. She has authored books and articles on photography, including "Photographs of ruins, ruins of photography. 1944-2014" (2014, awarded by NIMOZ in the "Visible Museum" competition in 2015), "Images of memory and knowledge. Photographic reproductions of works in archives and narratives of art history" (2022). In 2023, she completed a research internship at the Department for Anthropology, The National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution in Washington.
In my talk I would like to discuss the program "Against stereotypes" of the State Ethnographic Museum in Warsaw, which consists of two temporary exhibitions, interventions in the main exhibition "African expeditions, Asian roads", and an extensive educational program. Inspired by decolonial theories and practices, the program is a response to the stereotypes about Africa that are entrenched in our culture and that have been reflected in our Museum. Often based on misconceptions and simplifications, the Museum's activities to date have been subjected to critical reflection. We also analyzed our history, especially the dual entanglement in colonialism: as a country that was subjugated by invaders, and as a country that had colonial ambitions and intentions towards Africa and other places. The difficult past has become a starting point for a positive change, implemented in cooperation with representatives of African communities, Black Poles, artists and researchers interested in the representation of Africa in our Museum.
Emigration Museum in Gdynia
ul. Polska 1
81-339 Gdynia
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