The Malbork Castle Museum

Malbork in Royal Prussia

The exhibition has been organised in three dormitories of the High Castle as well as in the castle church of the Blessed Virgin Mary. A purpose of this exhibition is to present a history of the Malbork Castle, its extensive royal lands from Zulawy, the city of Malbork, the Malbork Province and a part of the Pomesanian diocese in the period of their belonging to Poland and functioning within the newly created Royal Prussia Province. The Temporary Exhibition project included a spatial arrangement for the exhibition of 226 objects, including paintings, sculptures, documents, maps, ceramics, coins, fabrics, and military items. All objects had specific requirements. Thus, presentation, security, light dosing were carefully taken into account during the design process. Also, this project required designing a system of display walls for exposure and the separation of sub-zones. The system of designed walls allows their modification / increasing or reducing their length / which makes it possible to re-use them when organising other exhibitions in the Museum space. An integral part of this project was designing information graphics for individual subzones and facilities. The exhibition walls and some interior walls of the dormitories were painted in colors referring to the art of the Old Polish period. The color scheme was built around natural pigments: iron red, chrome green, heliogen blue. No multimedia was used in the exhibition, leaving space for an individual interpretation of the works by visitors. The aim of the design of the Temporary Exhibition's interior was to maintain consistency, both formal and color; with the multiplicity and variety of exhibits and the obliging characteristic of the Malbork Castle’s historical interior. The collection of the Castle Museum in Malbork is the largest amongst presented artefacts (90 inventory items and over 20 archaeological artefacts - from the crypt in the chapel of St. Anna). 25 Polish institutions (archives, museums and churches) lent a total of 73 monuments. Foreign loans include a total of 23 display units, mainly from Swedish state institutions and museums from Germany