Warsaw taz | Krzysztof Kliszczyński is standing on the spiral staircase of the newly opened QueerMuzeum in Warsaw. Twenty-seven years ago, he was involved in the founding of Lambda Warszawa, Poland’s oldest LGBTIQ organisation. Since then, he and his fellow campaigners have fought to create a place for the study of queer history.

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‘For me, it’s a dream come true. We still don’t have a civil partnership law in Poland, but we now have a museum. For us – the community – and for everyone, for the whole of society.’

Kliszczyński is now the director of the QueerMuzeum, the first queer museum in Eastern Europe.

It is Friday, 6 December. All afternoon long, people have been queuing up to visit the newly opened permanent exhibition. International press teams are filming and interviewing visitors. Every guided tour on this day is so full that it is almost impossible to move around the museum. It is located on Ulica Marszałkowska, one of the main streets in the centre of Warsaw, just four tram stops from the famous Palace of Culture, surrounded by socialist architecture, lots of shops and cafés.

The former office space, which was renovated over the past two years with financial support from the city of Warsaw, measures approximately 60 square metres. The stairs lead to the first floor. The Lambda Archive’s collection of over 100,000 objects of queer history will open to visitors there at the end of December. It is clear that Kliszczyński and many of the audience know each other personally. He repeatedly refers in his speech to the work of the activists present from different generations and movements.

An ‘ocean of sources’

In a small space and with limited resources, the team of the museum’s advisory board, under the curatorial direction of historian Piotr Laskowksi, has succeeded in telling not just one, but many queer stories. The twelve-member advisory board consists of experts from the fields of art, literature and history, the NGO sector and activism. Queer historian Joanna Ostrowska is one of them.

She remembers the very first meeting in December 2023. ‘It was clear to us from the start that this exhibition could only show a small selection of all the material we have to offer.’ Ostrowska speaks of an ‘ocean of sources’ that she and the team were trying to swim in.

‘During my studies, my professors always said that I couldn’t research queer topics because there were no sources on them. The QueerMuzeum shows that this is nonsense. We have a long history and an incredible number of sources.’

The museum’s open archive is designed to provide local and international scholars and queer initiatives with opportunities and access that have not previously existed in Poland. When conducting her own research on queer victims of the Second World War and on sexualised violence in concentration camps, Ostrowska was often met with closed doors in institutions such as the Auschwitz-Birkenau museum archive. Nevertheless, she believes that collaboration between the QueerMuzeum and the major memorials will be possible at some point.

A queer history

When selecting the historical fragments for the exhibition, the board was concerned with inclusivity on several levels: it was explicitly not to be a gay historiography, but a queer history that takes into account different gender identities and sexual orientations, as well as different national and class backgrounds.

‘Borders in this region of Europe were constantly changing. The histories of the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Ukraine, Belarus and Germany are intertwined. We therefore cannot research them alone, but only in collaboration with researchers from all these contexts,’ she explains in an interview with the taz.

According to Krzysztof Kliszczyński, cooperation with various communities in Warsaw, as well as with archives and initiatives elsewhere, is already taking place. ‘Belarusian queers took the initiative to bring objects to the Lambda Archive that would not be safe in Belarus at the moment.’ This also includes digital sources that are no longer accessible online in Belarus.

Homosexuality never officially criminalised

The question of how queer history can be told, where so much of it has been and continues to be erased, also runs through the permanent exhibition in Warsaw. A timeline with two strands, divided into eight chapters, spans the walls of the room: ‘The upper strand is about the political struggle for rights, about pride, joy and sex. We want to show that queer history is not just about persecution and discrimination,’ explains Ostrowska.

The lower strand is dedicated to criminalisation and pathologisation, through laws, medical institutions and churches. In fact, Poland is one of the few countries in Europe where homosexuality has never been officially criminalised. However, there was still stigmatisation, discrimination and persecution.

In addition to short texts for each chapter in Polish and English, original documents and archive materials are displayed. There are also audio pieces and artistic works. The exhibition currently brings together 132 objects of queer history, 30 of which are originals. Visitors can swipe through a series of photos from the 1920s and 1930s on a tablet. They show people whose names and stories are not yet known to historians. However, the way they encounter and relate to each other in the pictures suggests references to queer ways of living.

Younger generations also involved

Contrary to the narrative that queer activism in Eastern Europe only emerged much later than in the West, the museum tells the story of the political organising of the 1980s, the first queer magazines, the thematisation of AIDS in Poland, the first lesbian meeting on the Baltic Sea beach of Mielno, and the founding of Lambda Warszawa in 1997. Next to it are the stage shoes of Lulla La Polaca. She began her artistic career in the 1970s and is considered the oldest Polish drag queen.

The exhibition ends with a poster from the first Polish Pride, which took place in Warsaw in 2001, and the first draft of the legalisation of same-sex partnerships from 2003. After three readings and a vote in the Senate, the draft was submitted to the Sejm. It failed. None of the later initiatives got as far as this in the legislative process.

‘We deliberately did not create a final, conclusive narrative, but rather show many endings that are intended to provide starting points for continuing the narrative,’ explains Joanna Ostrowska. The exhibition is designed in such a way that it can be changed at any time. The last few years up to the present are to be told together with the community and with the involvement of younger generations.

Happy, proud… and tired

The museum as an open place, the exhibition as a starting point for further engagement – this is what the opening weekend is all about. On Saturday afternoon, Krzysztof Kliszczyński is sitting on a panel of the New Museum of Modern Art, which was also recently opened on Ulica Marszałkowska, not far from the QueerMuzeum.

Representatives of various queer initiatives are discussing the question of what kind of queer museum Warsaw needs. Among them is Karol Radziszewski, probably Poland’s most famous contemporary queer artist. He has donated a screen print to the QueerMuzeum.

The event takes place in a light-flooded, open auditorium. All the rows of chairs are occupied, and many museum visitors linger and listen. Kliszczyński notes that there has never been a public debate on queer topics at an institution of this size before, another first. He is endlessly happy and proud, but also incredibly tired, Kliszczyński says in an interview with taz after the event.

Still dependent on state funding

Now that the museum has opened, he and the advisory board face the enormous task and responsibility of keeping it running. Almost all the work is still done on a voluntary basis. For this reason, the museum will initially only be open on two weekdays. The funding from the city of Warsaw will expire at the end of the year. The funding was tied to a rent reduction for the premises. ‘From January, we need new funding because we can’t pay the full rent,’ explains Kliszczyński.

On the one hand, the aim is to achieve long-term financing, but at the same time, the museum does not want to be completely dependent on state funding. The last few years of the PiS government have shown how quickly funding can be cut and content censored when political circumstances change. Kliszczyński and the advisory board hope to maintain a certain degree of autonomy for the museum through partial financing through fundraising and private donations.

Joanna Ostrowska also has a task ahead of her after the opening. In spring, a memorial plaque for queer victims and survivors of the Second World War is to be affixed to the outside of the museum; it would be the first of its kind in Poland. The city council has already given its approval. Now the tenants of the building still need to be convinced.