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On the inauguration of Poland’s first queer museum, Tomasz Kowalski was savouring a milestone for his LGBTQ neighborhood.
“This feels particular, like being a part of one thing that almost all most likely would by no means have occurred in Poland 10 years in the past,” mentioned the 21-year-old scholar, one in all many visitors crammed into the small exhibition area. “It’s not the perfect day to see correctly this museum, nevertheless it feels actually cozy to be right here with many different folks.”
Warsaw’s QueerMuzeum has opened one yr after Poland’s prime minister Donald Tusk and his pro-EU coalition ousted the rightwing Legislation and Justice (PiS) celebration. Underneath the earlier authorities, Poland was thought of the worst nation within the EU to be homosexual. Municipalities have been allowed to declare themselves LGBTQ-free zones.
This compact, brightly-lit museum is a grassroots challenge designed to counter that oppression. Housed in a former financial institution on Marszałkowska, one of many capital’s busiest streets, entry is free. Inside, a show of 150 paperwork, photographs and artefacts tells the story of the nation’s LGBTQ historical past.
Lambda, an LGBTQ affiliation, launched the challenge two years in the past. Along with crowdfunding and company donations, it obtained a start-up grant of 150,000 zlotys (€35,000) from Warsaw’s metropolis corridor — an indication of native authorities hoping to bolster Poland’s capital as a bastion of liberalism. Lambda’s archives might be positioned within the upstairs library, reached by a white spiral staircase.
A few of the shows spotlight durations when Poland enacted apparently progressive legal guidelines however failed to guard the homosexual neighborhood. In 1932 the nation decriminalised homosexuality and its postwar Communist regime eliminated some anti-gay laws. But homosexual folks might nonetheless be stored underneath surveillance and have been typically detained by the Communist police for allegedly subversive actions.
Homosexual folks in Poland nonetheless face discrimination. Tusk has didn’t ship on his promise to legalise same-sex partnerships inside his first 100 days in energy. His social reform agenda has prompted tensions inside his personal coalition, which incorporates conservative lawmakers who’re sturdy defenders of Catholicism.
Final month, the UN’s unbiased skilled on safety in opposition to gender violence and discrimination, Graeme Reid, referred to as on Polish lawmakers to enact stronger LGBTQ rights.
“The present authorities isn’t outspokenly homophobic and doesn’t use hate speech just like the earlier one, however alternatively Tusk and his coalition haven’t fulfilled all their marketing campaign guarantees,” mentioned Jakub Gawkowski, an artwork historian and curator who sits on the queer museum’s planning council. “Maybe our legislators are hypocrites, however I feel they’re additionally merely fearful of shedding a part of their extra conventional voters, which is why they don’t seem to be giving authorized rights to same-sex {couples}.”
Just a few attendees arrived on the museum’s opening in costumes to focus on Poland’s queer historical past and heritage. Karolina Micuła dressed as Nineteenth-century poet Maria Konopnicka, also referred to as an activist for Polish independence and girls’s rights, whereas her associate Ewa Kamoda got here as Maria Dulębianka, a painter with whom Konopnicka had a relationship.
“It is a museum, so we needed to point out it’s nothing new to be lesbians in Poland,” mentioned Micuła. “Each Polish schoolchild learns about Maria Konopnicka’s nationalistic poems, however no person will get taught that she beloved one other Maria.”
Additional change is anticipated. Final month, Warsaw’s liberal mayor Rafał Trzaskowski was chosen as presidential candidate to interchange outgoing president Andrzej Duda, a PiS nominee who has accused the LGBTQ motion of selling “an ideology.”
Efficiency artist Szymon Adamczak, who not too long ago returned to Poland after eight years in Amsterdam, mentioned younger folks in Poland weren’t that far other than these in Amsterdam. “I additionally suppose Polish society is extra progressive than its politicians,” he mentioned. “Not solely on [gender] rights but additionally as a result of it’s extra pro-European Union.”
raphael.minder@ft.com
