Page 215 - Ciancia, On Civilization's Edge

23
6.2). Each day, it opened its doors from 10am to 2pm and from 4pm to 8pm, charging an entrance
fee of one złoty for adults, 50 groszy (half a złoty) for young people and soldiers, and 20 groszy for

people in large groups.

[INSERT FIGURE 6.2]

Figure 6.2: Collections at the Volhynian Museum in Łuck. Note the preponderance of folk items, like
the costumes in the photograph on the left. Source: The National Digital Archive (Narodowe
Archiwum Cyfrowe).

The provincial museum was based on the assumption that the fragmentary quality of many of

the items on display, which drew on a tradition by which village teachers would assemble small-scale

24
collections of local specimens, was its greatest strength. It therefore featured objects of regional,
rather than national, significance that would elicit emotional responses among the museum’s visitors

and make them conscious of their Volhynian identity. As an article in the Volhynian Review

explained a month after the museum opened its doors, there was little point pretending that it could

compete with famous collections displayed elsewhere. “This is not the Louvre, nor the Hermitage,

nor even the National Museum in Kraków, where one is entranced by elegant porcelain vases,

clothes, costumes, historical armor, and so on,” he argued, alluding to the great museums of Paris,

Saint Petersburg, and Poland’s cultural mecca in the south. Instead, the Volhynian museum

necessarily offered “fragments of whole vessels” and “parts of fabrics instead of whole costumes.”

But the very fact that everything within the museum’s walls “comes from Volhynia or is about

Volhynia,” the author went on, made up for the lack of spectacular items. By virtue of their being

25
local, these objects were “so very interesting and enlightening.”

23 “Muzeum wołyńskie,” 3.
24 On teachers’ traditions, see “List ze wsi wołyńskiej,” Przegląd Wołyński, December 13, 1931, 3.
25 “Muzeum wołyńskie,” 3.

215