Museum and the Community – the Fryderyk Chopin Museum
A meeting with Maciej Janicki and prof. Anno Mungen

The meeting in the "Museums and the Community" series was focused on the Fryderyk Chopin Museum in Warsaw, with guests Maciej Janicki, the Museum's curator, and prof. Anno Mungen, the director of Forschungsinstitut für Musiktheater (Opera and Musical Theater Research Institute) at the University of Bayreuth. The meeting will be led by Łukasz Bukowiecki (University of Warsaw's Institute of Polish Culture).

The Fryderyk Chopin Museum visitors, thanks to a collection of objects, special stage design and interactive multimedia, can not only “hear Chopin”, but also “see” the pianist's biography, and even “feel” the atmosphere of his times. The Museum's permanent exhibition was analyzed in terms of “how” - and “for whom” - it shows what is essentially non-visual: the composer's personal talents, his education and career path, his creative processes, their contexts and results.

Discussion participants were Maciej Janicki, who prepared the exhibition in 2008-2010, currently the Museum's curator, and prof. Anno Mungen, a prominent German music and theater specialist, who analyzes media that combine music and visual art, including their use in museum exhibitions. We tried to find out how the Chopin Museum exhibition conveys the composer's music and its community references, in a local, national and universal perspective.