Poland’s first LGBTQ+ museum, the QueerMuzeum, has opened to visitors in Warsaw. The project was led by the country’s oldest LGBTQ+ organisation.
The new museum provides a look at the history and culture of the country’s LGBTQ+ community. It was developed by Lambda Warszawa, Poland’s oldest LGBTQ+ association.
“I’m very moved because this is a truly historic moment for Lambda Warszawa,” the organisation’s president, Miłosz Przepiórkowski, told a press conference (via Polish news network TVP World).
“Lambda Warszawa functions primarily as an aid organization, so our activities aren’t visible from the outside, but that’s changing today.”
He told the publication: “It is a statement. We are on Marszalkowska Street, right in the heart of Warsaw – this should also be a message to the politicians: ‘Look, we are opening the fifth queer museum in the world in a country where the legal situation for queer people is the worst in the whole of the EU’.”
Many of the 150 objects on view in the QueerMuzeum come from Lambda Warszawa’s collection, displayed in chronological order starting in the 16th century. They include letters, photographs and early examples of LGBTQ+ activism.
“We really wanted to show that this history is long,” said Krzysztof Kliszczyński, the museum’s director.
LGBT+ history and culture
“That means that, to put it simply, we wanted to express an obvious truth: that since there have been people on Polish soil, there have been queer people on Polish soil – different terms were used, but they have always been there.”
As above, Poland has the worst LGBTQ+ rights record in the European Union. The country does not currently recognise civil partnerships or same-sex marriages, but the Polish government introduced a bill in October to legalise civil unions for same-sex and opposite-sex couples.
Across the world, the American LGBTQ+ Museum is set to open in New York in 2026. The UK’s first national LGBTQ+ museum opened in London in 2022, and Sydney’s first museum for LGBTQ+ history and culture debuted in early 2024.
Images courtesy of QueerMuzeum
