In 2015, Museum of Ar­chi­tec­ture in Wroclaw cel­e­brated its 50th an­niver­sary. On this oc­ca­sion we have pre­pared two ex­hi­bi­tions devoted to the history and ac­tiv­i­ties of the in­sti­tu­tion: the exhibitionStopped in the frame. 50 years of the Museum of Architecture, sum­ma­riz­ing the most im­por­tant moments and events from the life of the museum and “From monastery to museum. The history of Bernar­dine build­ings in Wroclaw”. As part of the jubilee year, we have also pub­lished a book written by Pro­fes­sor Olgierd Czerner, the first di­rec­tor of the Museum of Ar­chi­tec­ture, entitledMy twen­ti­eth century.

The hall­mark of the jubilee was also the graphic design of prints, logos and web tools, closely linked to the ac­tiv­i­ties con­ducted in the pre­vi­ous year in the in­te­rior of the build­ing. The graphic design of oc­ca­sional prints pre­pared to cel­e­brate the 50th an­niver­sary of the museum (an in­vi­ta­tion and a brochure) was the con­tin­u­a­tion of the new visual iden­tity system of the museum.

About MA

Museum of Ar­chi­tec­ture in Wroclaw is the only museum in­sti­tu­tion in Poland ded­i­cated en­tirely to the history of ar­chi­tec­ture and con­tem­po­rary ar­chi­tec­ture. It was es­tab­lished in 1965, ini­tially as a branch of the Museum of the City of Wroclaw, and op­er­ated under the name Museum of Ar­chi­tec­ture and Reconstruction.

The founder of the museum was Wroclaw’s main con­ser­va­tor of his­tor­i­cal mon­u­ments and later pro­fes­sor at the Tech­ni­cal Uni­ver­sity of Wroclaw, Olgierd Czerner, who led the in­sti­tu­tion from its found­ing until the year 2000. The initial goal of the museum was first and fore­most sourc­ing and in­ven­to­ry­ing the sur­viv­ing rem­nants of ar­chi­tec­tural details from build­ings ruined during the war. The most valu­able of them were col­lected in a per­ma­nent, con­stantly in­creas­ing ex­hi­bi­tion in the Ro­manesque Hall.

The museum is housed in a his­toric complex of former Bernar­dine monastery, built in the second half of the fif­teenth and early six­teenth century. The monastery complex was se­verely damaged during World War II and was par­tially ruined for nearly two decades. The re­con­struc­tion of the build­ing, con­ducted since 1960 in ac­cor­dance with the designs of Edmund Małachow­icz, finally ended in 1974 with the opening of the former church of St. Bernar­dine of Siena, where the main ex­hi­bi­tion hall of the museum is located.

Over time, the museum has ex­panded its focus to the whole ter­ri­tory of Polish, de­vot­ing more at­ten­tion to con­tem­po­rary ar­chi­tec­ture. It has also started to collect ex­hibits on mod­ernist ar­chi­tec­ture from the in­ter­war period. - We’ve re­al­ized that the most promi­nent ar­chi­tects of that period are about to end their pro­fes­sional ac­tiv­ity and we have one last chance to save what is left from their design doc­u­men­ta­tion after the war - said the di­rec­tor, Olgierd Czerner.

In 1971, the museum became in­de­pen­dent and was renamed the Museum of Ar­chi­tec­ture in Wroclaw. As one of the first in­sti­tu­tions of its kind in the world, it became a co-founder of the In­ter­na­tional Con­fed­er­a­tion of Ar­chi­tec­ture Museums (ICAM), which today brings to­gether more than one hundred or­ga­ni­za­tions working on almost all continents.

In the year 2000, Jerzy Ilkosz became the new di­rec­tor of the museum. Due to his in­ter­ests, besides from pre­sent­ing the con­tem­po­rary Polish ar­chi­tec­ture, he focused on re­search­ing and pre­sent­ing the ar­chi­tec­ture of Wroclaw mod­ernism. It was also the time when the museum took over the col­lec­tion of the old Con­struc­tion Archive of the City of Wroclaw cov­er­ing more than 150 000 designs of build­ings in Wrocław, dating from the early nine­teenth century until 1945. At present, thanks to the use of Eu­ro­pean Union funds, more than 43 000 archival designs were dig­i­tized and made avail­able on the website of the Con­struc­tion Archive.

Since its foun­da­tion, the museum has or­ga­nized more than 600 tem­po­rary ex­hi­bi­tions, which were pre­sented in Wroclaw and other Polish and Eu­ro­pean cities.

Museum of Ar­chi­tec­ture in Wroclaw carries out pro­grams and events for ar­chi­tects, his­to­ri­ans and the general public. It pre­pares ex­hi­bi­tions on ar­chi­tec­ture, applied art, paint­ing and graph­ics. Most of the ex­hi­bi­tions are ac­com­pa­nied by pub­li­ca­tions in the form of sci­en­tific dis­ser­ta­tions, cat­a­logues or folders. The museum co­op­er­ates with the city au­thor­i­ties in pro­tect­ing and re­vi­tal­iz­ing the ar­chi­tec­tural her­itage of Wroclaw.