Neon Museum, Warsaw

Neon Museum in Warsaw
Established19 May 2012 (2012-05-19)
LocationMińska 25,
Warsaw, Poland
Typeprivate museum
CollectionsNeon signs
DirectorIlona Karwińska and David Hill
Websitewww.neonmuzeum.org

    Neon Museum, also the Museum of Neon (Polish: Muzeum Neonów) is a museum located in Warsaw's Praga-Południe. The institution documents and protects Polish and Eastern Bloc light advertisements created after World War II. It is the first in Poland and one of the few museums of neon signs in the world.

    The museum is located at ul. Mińska 25, on the premises of Soho Factory. It was established in 2012.

    Photographer Ilona Karwińska and graphic designer David Hill managed to save more than 200 neon signs and about 500 letters from imminent destruction.

    The museum also maintains a huge archive of documentation, drawings, photographs and original plans related to the history of these signs.

    First, the guide introduces the visitors to the museum itself and the Soho factory area, and then a double-decker bus takes them through the streets of Warsaw, and the guide tells them where this or that sign, advertisement was installed. A collection of Polish neon signs and advertisements from the socialist era is popular with visitors.

    The oldest neon sign is probably located at the Warszawa Stadion train station. The museum acquired, among others, the neon signs of the restaurants "Shanghai" and "Ambasador", the café "Jaś i Małgosia" and the cooperative trading house "Sezam".

    The museum's collection includes a "Karina" sign made from the letters of the original neon "Tkaniny dekoracyjne" signage. The sign "Karina" was created during the filming of the movie Aftermath by Władysław Pasikowski about the Jedwabne pogrom.

    Exhibitions of the collection were held in London, Luxembourg, Amsterdam.