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The Night of Museums is more than merely a chance of visiting museums at night and also more than celebrating The Day of Museologists (falling on 18 May) together with enthusiasts of museums. It is a moment when museums open their doors a lot broader – to talks, recollections, meetings with other people. This is exactly what we experienced on 16 May this year at our Opole seat. Despite the cloudy weather, a great number of visitors came to spend that night with us.

The visitors took an opportunity of being shown round two exhibitions: a permanent and a temporary one, and listen to a lecture delivered by Dr Piotr Stanek on the radio in POW camps during World War II. It was a story about how significant words and voices are in times deprived of freedom. The meeting attracted a good number of interested people.

Our programme included also events connected with the exhibition devoted to the artistic output of Jan Marcin Szancer. The theatre workshop run by professional mime Dariusz Różański reminded the participants that imagination and art help people preserve their sensitivity independent of times in which they came to live. Children and adults, while listening to fragments of J.M. Szancer’s biography, read by Piotr Fronczewski, were able to appreciate the artist’s illustrations to a fuller extent.

The evening ended with a film show. The visitors were shown “Akademia Pana Kleksa” [Mr Blotch’s Academy] of 1983 (dir. Krzysztof Gradowski). It was a meeting with memory, culture and a tale that – independent of the listener’s age – is able to bring people together, which we ourselves experienced again.