Exhibition at the A. Mickiewicz Museum in Śmiełów

Starting next Tuesday, we invite you to get acquainted with the temporary exhibition "Island of Freedom. The Historical and Literary Society and the Polish Library in Paris."

In the heart of Paris, on the island of St. Louis, on the banks of the Seine, sits the Polish Library, founded in 1838. Its founders, émigrés after the November Uprising of 1830 gathered in the Historical and Literary Society, including Adam Prince Czartoryski, Karol Sienkiewicz, Julian Ursyn Niemcewicz and Adam Mickiewicz, among others, wanted to create a library collecting Polish national writing, an intellectual center for émigrés and an archive documenting the life of Polish émigrés on French soil. Over time, the library also began to collect museum objects, today collected in the Adam Mickiewicz Museum and the Frederic Chopin Salon, as well as paintings and sculptures by Poles working in Paris. The exhibition tells the story of this unique place, which was a true "island of freedom" for many years during the Partitions and after World War II. The Great Emigration created in the Library an oasis of Polish culture and a place for meetings and discussions of Poles.

For subsequent generations of emigrants, the place was an object of pride and care, although they could not always take proper care of it. For compatriots back home, especially those subjected to Russification or Germanization, and later influenced by Communist propaganda, the Polish Library became a myth - but a special one, because it truly existed. Nothing can replace the emotion one still feels when entering the thresholds of the Polish Library in Paris.

The purpose of the exhibition is to present the atmosphere and uniqueness of this place. The 20 boards that make it up show in an interesting way the history of the Library, profiles of its creators and images of the most valuable collections: manuscripts, old prints, maps, works of art and other memorabilia, which have been collected for almost two hundred years. We will see manuscripts of Adam Mickiewicz and portraits of the bard and his family, as well as mementos of Frederick Chopin - musical autographs, his armchair and a lock of his hair. From the library's vast collection of cymels, the most valuable have been selected, including the resolution on the national colors and the act of dethronement of Tsar Nicholas I in 1831, 16th-century prints from Kraków printing houses, the manuscript of "Dziady" by Adam Mickiewicz, first editions of emigrant editions of Polish poets and writers, the first edition of "De revolutionibus" by Nicolaus Copernicus, drawings by Norwid, watercolors by Kosciuszko, paintings by Olga Boznanska and Stanislaw Biegas and many other works invaluable to Polish culture.

The exhibition "Island of Freedom" premiered at the headquarters of the Polish Senate in 2014. A year later it was presented at the Royal Castle in Warsaw, and President Bronislaw Komorowski attended the opening. It is now available to interested cultural institutions. The exhibition was prepared by the Historical and Literary Society and the Polish Library in Paris in cooperation with the National Library in Warsaw.