The Silesian Museum can be thought of as a gate to Silesia, with a scope extending from both animate and inanimate objects to prehistory, history and art history, primarily with regard to the history of Silesia, as well as north and northwest Moravia. The Silesian Museum is a contributory organisation of the Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic. It is the oldest public museum on the territory of the modern-day Czech Republic, with a history stretching back to 1814. With its 2,400,000 exhibition items, it is, at the same time, the third biggest museum in the country.
The Silesian Museum currently administers six exhibition buildings and complexes: apart from the Historical Exhibition Building in Opava city centre, there is the Nový Dvůr Arboretum in Stěbořice, the Second World War Memorial in Hrabyně, the Petr Bezruč Memorial in Ostrožná street in Opava, the Hlučín-Darkovičky Czechoslovak Fortification Complex and the Petr Bezruč Chalet in Ostravice. The museum is host to specialists in mineralogy, geology, palaeontology, botany, dendrology, entomology, zoology, museology, archaeology, ethnography, numismatics, history, art history including the history of photography, music literature and theatre and military history, as well as restoration experts, museologists and librarians.
Every year the Silesian Museum organises around 30 temporary exhibitions, with special attention devoted to the history of and nature in Silesia and topics associated with the Second World War. The museum is a research organisation and carries out basic and applied research. The results of this research are published in, amongst others, the peer-reviews Časopis Slezského zemského muzea, which is published in two series (series A for the natural sciences and series B for the historical sciences), as well as the Slezský sborník journal, which is also peer-reviewed.
Article last updated: 10.06.2013
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