EXHIBITIONS DEDICATED TO COMMUNIST POLAND IN POLISH MUSEUMS IN 1989–2017 FROM A QUANTITATIVE (STATISTICAL) PERSPECTIVE

Abstract

The objective of the research was a survey identification of the presence of the history of Communist Poland, PRL, in museum narrative in 1989–2017. Importantly, this is a repeated, supplemented, and more thorough research versus the one presented in the paper ‘PRL in Museum Narrative over the Last 25 Years’ published in 2014 in the Światowid. Rocznik Muzeum PRL-u (w organizacji) periodical. The research discussed in the present paper forms part of a doctoral dissertation, constituting the research’s second stage. As a result of the conducted research based on survey answers provided by museums and on individual research a database containing 642 exhibitions was created. When processing the data, quantitative analysis was adopted. After data cleaning the following statistical trends were analysed: exhibition duration over the whole research period, percentage of leading themes, percentage of themes in respective cities. The conducted analysis has permitted to observe trends in museum narrative concerning PRL. Also the most popular exhibition duration over the research period has been identified (up to two years and permanent exhibitions). The most popular categories have been named: art history, political history, history of everyday life. Three groups of urban centres where museum narrative is present to a varied degree have been named. The fourth group contains cities in whose museums the topic of PRL has not been tackled over the last 28 years, or such projects cannot be reliably confirmed.