The Krzysztof Findziński Collection. A Cabinet of Memories. Asia

What is a collection? A set of things - or a record of a life?

The temporary exhibition The Krzysztof Findziński Collection presents objects from Asia, most of them donated to the Asia and Pacific Museum by Krzysztof Findziński, a collector who is also the subject of the show. It draws on the idea of the old cabinets of curiosities, the forerunners of today’s museums: spaces in which objects from different cultures, periods and orders stood side by side. Its biographical approach makes it possible to follow how personal experiences became the beginning of a lifelong passion for collecting.

The narrative introduces Krzysztof Findziński (born 1948) and the history of his family, because experiences from his childhood and youth played an important part in his path to collecting, including growing up among objects brought back from Asia by his father. A childhood spent in Romania, the Netherlands and Vietnam, his parents’ interests and his own later journeys to Asia all shaped his aesthetic sensibility.

The exhibition culminates in the collector’s room, a space reconstructed from photographs of Krzysztof Findziński’s own flat. The more than 150 objects gathered there convey the atmosphere of the collector’s daily life.