While working on the permanent exhibition at The Asia and Pacific Museum, we realised how much Poland has changed in the past ten years. Traveling around the globe has become easier more accessible. Teenagers visit Asia during vacations with their parents. Twenty-year olds choose Bali over Italy as their holiday destinations. We started asking questions about their perception of the world, Museum’s collection, objects from Asia and Pacific and decided to invite this new generation to a project called “STIRRING”. In 2019 and 2020 students from the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw and the University of Warsaw (Institute of Art History) participated in various workshops and discussions. They met with curators, conservators and cataloguers, visited Museum’s storerooms and created their own pieces that were inspired by the Collection or commented on it. In the process we discovered what issues are crucial and most interesting for young people, what they search for in the museums of world cultures, what is their attitude towards them and how to meet the expectations of the first generation that lived their whole lives in a globalised world.

Long-term artistic collaborations have proven to be very useful tools in curatorial practices. In this paper I would like to present the method adopted in programming such collaborations using projects STIRRING (PORUSZENIE) and THIS IS POLAND / THE ASIA AND PACIFIC MUSEUM (TU JEST POLSKA / MUZEUM AZJI I PACYFIKU) as case studies.

Exhibitions are available at wystawa.muzeumazji.pl and muzeumazji.pl/wystawy czasowe/tu-jest-polska