The buildings of the Opolien Silesia Museum include a late seventeenth-century Baroque building edifice that had belonged to the Jesuit college, a classical house built in 1817-1818 and a "provincial inn" from the early nineteenth century. The latter, at 10, Ozimska Street was incorporated into the Museum in 1999 as the Museum Gallery. The Museum itself opened in 1932. Initially a regional institution, it was granted the status of a district museum in 1958.
The holdings are divided into several sections:
- The Archaeological Section contains findings from local excavations, and is primarily a collection of Stone Age objects such as stone and flint tools and bone exhibits, Bronze and Iron Age objects such as ceramics of the Lusatian and Pomeranian cultures as well as a variety of objects from burial grounds dating to the Roman period and including tools, weapons and metal and glass ornaments.
The History Section has valuable old prints and Silesian printed matter by almost all major Silesian publishers; documents related to the plebiscite of 1921 and records pertaining to the Silesian uprisings; documents of the Union of Poles in Germany, a collection of guild crafts, and documents and militaria related to guild activities; old atlases, maps and representations of the city of Opole as well as numismatics exhibits, such as coins and medals.
Konrad Krzyzanowski,
"Portret zony z kotem" / "Portrait of Wife with Cat", 1912,
Opolien Silesia Museum
The Art Section contains examples of Silesian Gothic art with the famous Sadowo Madonna (1380), a collection of decorative arts, including ceramics made in Silesia, a gallery of Polish painting of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries with historical and combat paintings, genre paintings, numerous landscapes and portraits by Jozef Chelmonski, Maksymilian Gierymski, Juliusz Kossak, Jozef Pankiewicz, Jan Stanislawski, Julian Falat, Stanislaw Ignacy Witkiewicz, Konrad Krzyzanowski and other major artists of the time. There is also a collection of over eighty oil canvasses and more than eight hundred water-colours and drawings by Jan Cybis, Poland's leading water-colourist, born near Opole, as well as a collection of works by contemporary local artists.
The Ethnographic Section illustrates the material, cultural and social life of the Opole region in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries with everyday objects, agricultural tools, crafts and folk art, including sculpture, painting, costume, and art associated with religious rituals, most notably kroszonki - hollow decorated Easter eggs.
The Nature and Wildlife Section shows the natural world through herbaria of vascular plants, a collection of Central European plants, a collection of Polish and foreign insects, molluscs, birds and mammals as well as through palaeological and geological holdings such as petrified animals and plants found in Silesia, and rock and mineral formations from all over the country.
Permanent exhibitions: The Pre-History of the Opole Region; Opole: A Fortress, Town and Regional Capital City; Polish Painting of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries; Jan Cybis: Painting and Drawing (at 10, Ozimska Street).
Muzeum Śląska Opolskiego
Mały Rynek 7a (wystawy stałe)
45-023 Opole
Region: opolskie
Phone: (+48 77) 454 66 77
Fax: (+48 77) 454 46 11
WWW: www. muzeum.opole.pl
Email: sekretariat@muzeum.opole.pl