A SEAMAN, DIPLOMAT, AND COLLECTOR: ANDRZEJ WAWRZYNIAK 1931–2020

Abstract

In the tribute the personality of Andrzej Wawrzyniak (1931–2020), the founder and long-standing Director of the Asia and Pacific Museum in Warsaw (bearing his name since 2017), is presented. Working as a diplomat in Indonesia in the 1960s, he amassed a sizeable collection of artefacts from the Malay Archipelago, large even if compared to similar ones worldwide, which allowed to set up a new museum in Warsaw in 1973. The Museum soon extended the sphere of its interests, today boasting collections from almost the whole of continental Asia and a substantial part of Oceania. For 40 years the collection was shaped mainly by the collecting choices of its founder and surprisingly numerous donations. As a result, a unique collection was formed, documenting a wide range of cultures, at the same time bearing testimony to its author’s personality. Furthermore, the issues of the perception of the Asia and Pacific Museum as well as of Asia’s cultures are discussed in the paper, and so are later alterations of this perception. Additionally, the questions of selection criteria and evaluation of museum objects are tackled.