nr 17 | No 17 

In 2017-2018, Mariusz Marszal produced the series 'Anomalia', which included more than a dozen photographs of exhibits selected from the natural history collection of the National Museum in Szczecin. The natural history collection was one of the pillars of Szczecin's pre-war museology, which came under Polish curatorship in 1945. The 19th century, when it began to take shape, is considered the golden age of natural history collecting. At the time, ambitious European institutions competed to build collections that would represent the world's flora and fauna as comprehensively as possible. By the 1870s, the Szczecin collection included unique entomological specimens and numerous specimens of native and exotic fauna, especially birds. Interest in collecting wildlife waned in the 20th century, and the display and development of zoological collections in particular was curtailed by changes in ethical sensibilities and social awareness. In an author's note alongside a photograph of an eagle from a pre-war ornithological collection, Marszal recalls the figure of Paul Robien (1882-1945), an amateur naturalist, ecologist and pacifist from Szczecin whose particular passion was birds. Robien spent years observing nature on the island of Mönne (Sadlińskie Łąki) in the River Oder. He shared his impressive knowledge of birds in articles published in the local press and also worked for several years at the Stettiner Naturkundemuseum (Szczecin Museum of Natural History), campaigning for nature in an uncompromising way that was ahead of his time. Robien's ideals and his resistance to totalitarian power are an inspiration for contemporary local green movements and, as Marszal's Anomalia series demonstrates, artistic activities that are part of an important current reflection on museum collections. Magdalena Lewoc