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A large rainbow flag, which will be on display at Warsaw's planned QueerMuzeum, Source: City of Warsaw

First Queer Museum in Poland to open in Warsaw

First Queer Museum in Poland to open in Warsaw

The capital is trying to clean up the reputation of the country as a non-progressive space

This fall, a new museum will open doors in Warsaw (Poland) and its thematic contents may seem quite unusual for a country that has been consistently ranked as the worst in the EU for LGBTQ people to reside in. The cultural space in question will be called QueerMuzeum and will be not only the first such in Poland but overall - only the third such museum in Europe and fifth in the world.

The planned museum is in line with a commitment expressed by the new liberal government of Donal Tusk to reverse the discriminating policies of his predecessors towards the gay community.

The first Pride Parade in Warsaw was organized in 2005 and a special rainbow flag was sewn for it, but then the event was cancelled by then-mayor Lech Kaczynski. The flag, showing signs of burns due to its tumultuous story, has been preserved and will be one of the prominent artefacts to be displayed in the museum.

“Not in the closet”

The museum at Marszałkowska Street, scheduled to open at the end of September, will collect and make available documents, testimonies and artefacts linked to the history of the LGBTQ community in the Polish capital. Its location is also not coincidental.

This space is on the main street of Warsaw, at the front, with a large window. It is not a closet; it is a glass display case in which we will show ourselves. Here, our culture will be visible to thousands of passers-by,” explained Grzegorz Piątek, an architectural historian and member of the museum’s council.

Lambda Warsaw Archive, the largest Polish archive of the non-heteronormative community, collected since 1997, has approximately 100,000 archival units - press clippings, magazines, leaflets, posters, documents, and photos from the years 1945–2024. It will thus now have the opportunity to display out in the open this side of Warsaw’s identity.

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