History

The new seat of the Gdynia City Museum is a modern bright sandstone building located where the sea and land meet. It was opened by the President of Poland Lech Kaczyński during a ceremony that took place on 16th November 2007. This event ended Gdynia’s long struggle for a suitable place to present its past or a place where generations could exchanges thoughts, experiences and dreams. The idea of setting up a municipal museum in Gdynia was born among the local elite in the 60s of the 20th century. Its activity and determination resulted in the City Public Library setting up the City History Documentation Department which was located in the historic house from the early 20th century in 30 Starowiejska Street, in which a Kashubian activist and a Polish patriot Antoni Abraham lived for several years.

For 14 years, researchers and enthusiasts of the project gathered exhibits: photographs, postcards, documents on social life, posters, plans, maps and works of art, which became the basis of the collection for the Gdynia City Museum which the Mayor founded on 1st January 1983. Its management’s office was located in Starowiejska Street, in the so-called Abraham’s house.

The warehouse and exhibition facilities were located in the former Gdynia’s artists’ exhibition pavilion in 21 Waszyngtona Street, where the Gemini Recreation Center is today. The time when the Museum waited for its new building was spent organizing exhibitions and events, extending the collections and, above all, building lasting, strong relations with the local community. Tens of thousands of objects gathered in the Museum are a source of knowledge about the past and today’s life of the city, which constantly fascinates tourists and makes new generations of its inhabitants proud.

Mission

Gdynia

Gdynia is a unique city in Polish history. It is Poland’s dream of access to the sea come true as well as the most spectacular outcome of Poles’ 20th century modernization efforts. Therefore, it is a city in which modernity and everyday life are intertwined with myths – the myth of the sea, the myth of modernity, the myth of entrepreneurship, the myth of Polishness, the myth of the interwar, the myth of the city. We want to explore the ordinary, everyday history and modernity of the city as well as its mythology, or, more precisely, its various mythologies.

Modernity

Gdynia is modernity’ – modern politics, economics and architecture or modern transport. As a part of its activity, the Museum explores and presents modernity in its diversity – its good and bad aspects or the relevant and obsolete ones as well as the spectacular and the ordinary, which may be barely noticeable.

Designing

Gdynia is a modernist city. Modernism and design are closely intertwined. The modern world is largely a designed world. We are surrounded by completed design projects: buildings, vehicles, objects, prints. Gdynia presents design as an important element of our lives. We want to present the important, interesting, typical, unique famous of forgotten phenomena in Polish and international design.

Education

Just like every city, Gdynia not only lives with present, but also designs the future of the urban community. We understand the importance of education for building a good future and we know that culture has the power to bond communities, so cultural education is one of the most important goals for us. Through education based on modern ideas, we want to not only explain phenomena around us, but also to provide tools for independent interpretation of the world and culture.

Gdynia is broadcasting!

We recently inaugurated a series of events in the city space and on the Internet, through which you will be able to discover interesting, surprising and inspiring threads from the history of the city of Gdynia. Explore the city as you like: while walking, listening to podcasts, exploring on your own or in the company of people close to you. Send your own signal towards urban spaces and set off on a journey with us!

Kazimierz „Kachu” Ostrowski

The mission of the Gdynia City Museum is to set new directions, to present, discuss and talk about important people, events and phenomena. A museum is its people – this slogan has guided us for a long time, and with our activities we prove that these are not empty words. One of them is the project FOR FRIENDS: KACHU, which aims to introduce our audiences to the silhouette of an outstanding Gdynia artist, Kazimierz Kach Ostrowski (1917-1999), painter, student of professors of painting: Janusz Strzałecki, Artur Nacht-Samborski and Jacek Żuławski at the State Higher School of Fine Arts in Sopot and a student at the Paris atelier of avant-garde masters Ferdinand and Nadia Léger, creator of monumental architectural compositions made in sgraffito technique, designer of tapestries, carpets and stained glass.

The Monograph of Gdynia

The Monograph of Gdynia, is a new series of publications by the Gdynia City Museum and the University of Gdansk Publishing House, initiated by our Museum in connection with the need to comprehensively cover Gdynia’s past in book form.