The Museum is housed in six Old Town houses, all being post-war reconstructions. They include the fifteenth-century Balcerowska House, rebuilt in the Baroque style with Gothic elements; the fifteenth-century Orlemusowska House, rebuilt in the seventeenth-century Baroque style; and four smaller houses on the side of Brzozowa Street, purpose-built for the Museum in 1962.

The Museum opened owing to the efforts of Aleksander Semkowicz in 1950 as the Adam Mickiewicz and Juliusz Slowacki Museum, and the first exhibition was mounted in 1953. In 1960 the Museum initiated its profile enrichment program to create exhibitions devoted to other writers and poets, notably Julian Tuwim, Maria Dabrowska and Leopold Staff, and added modern literature to its scope, changing its name to the present-day one in 1971.

The Museum initiated the opening of other Museums of a similar profile, in particular the Jozef Ignacy Kraszewski Museum in Dresden, Germany, in 1960, the Museum of Romanticism in Opinogora in 1961, the Wladyslaw Broniewski Museum in Warsaw in 1963, the Andrzej Strug Museum in 1981, the Maria Dabrowska Museum in Warsaw and the Adam Mickiewicz Museum in Istanbul, Turkey, in 1984, and the Adam Mickiewicz Museum in Nowogrodek, Belarus, in 1992.

The Department of Manuscripts preserves Adam Mickiewicz’s manuscripts of Grazyna, pages of Pan Tadeusz, poems and letters; the Filomats’ Archive; the correspondence of the Malewskis, Szymanowskis, Goreckis, and of Wladyslaw and Jozef Mickiewicz; Adam Towianski’s and his movement’s archive; manuscripts by Polish men of letters of the nineteenth and twentieth century, in particular by Slowacki, Norwid, Lenartowicz, Sienkiewicz, Konopnicka, Micinski, Zeromski, Nalkowska, Dabrowska, Staff, Tuwim, Czechowicz, Przybos, Brzekowski, Galczynski, Kruczkowski, Zawieyski, Andrzejewski, Gombrowicz, and others. Visitors will also see manuscripts of the World War II Wisla publishing campaign. The Library, whose holdings of printed matter extend in date from the fifteenth to the twentieth century, boasts an extensive collection of historical books and literature. Focusing in particular on the Romantic period, it has a collection of works by Adam Mickiewicz and of the Polish Library and the Adam Mickiewicz Museum in Paris, notably old prints, works related to the emigration following the November 1831 Rising, and to Adam Mickiewicz. The Art and Records Department preserves objects related the lives and work of the Polish writers and to the Polish culture and literature in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Among its collection of fine art, furniture, decorative arts and crafts, books and mementoes, is a large group of exhibits related to Adam Mickiewicz; a collection of objects related to Adam Towianski, with works by Walenty Wankowicz; portraits of Polish writers of the eighteenth through the twentieth century in the form of paintings, sculpture, medals, drawings, and prints; and a collection of works of art by writers-artists, notably Norwid, Kraszewski, Wyspianski, Witkacy, and Schulz. The Photographic Archive maintains a collection of nineteenth-century daguerreotypes and photographs as well as a wide range of photographs of the inter-war period and modern times. The Audio Department preserves recorded voices of Polish writers and a wealth of other audio and visual material.

Permanent exhibition: „Adam Mickiewicz: 1798-1855”.

Muzeum Literatury im. Adama Mickiewicza
Rynek Starego Miasta 20
00-272 Warszawa
Region: mazowieckie
Phone: (+48 22) 831 40 61
Phone/Fax: (+48 22) 831 76 92
WWW: www.muzeumliteratury.pl
Email: sekretariat@muzeumliteratury.pl

Text taken with permission from Culture.pl. Find the original version here