"This is a wide-ranging examination of the ideological uses of collecting in contemporary Poland. Public museums, objects, and public monuments ordered as collections of historical memory as well as and personal collection-all tell a unified story about how collections produce ideological narratives and what they mean in Poland today. It is on the one hand an intellectual history rooted in both the Polish past and current political events, primarily the Polish memory of the Holocaust, and on the other, a broader project about the ideological potential inherent in museums, public spaces, objects, and narratives applicable far beyond Polish borders. The monograph analyzes Princess Izabela Czartoryskas first Polish patriotic museum and compares it to the Auschwitz Memorial Museum, the Warsaw Rising Museum, the Polin Museum of the History of Polish Jews, and the Museum of the Second World War. The book considers narratives in these museums, identifying a form of "narrative panic" on the part of politicians to control storytelling in museums. It also considers the way objects can speak for themselves when unrestricted by curated minds. After a discussion of select museums, the monograph turns to how Polish memory is produced in monuments in public spaces. It then investigates the psychological compulsion to amass materials through case studies ranging from a private art collection to a filmmakers personal archive.

The study addresses both the expression of Polish exceptionalism evident in these case studies and, more broadly, the psychology of collecting. Lastly, the book summarizes its main points in an analysis of Wadysaw Pasikowskis controversial film Aftermath (2012), a film that combines issues of public space, collectors, and Holocaust memory"-- Provided by publisher.