COURAGE

connecting collections

The collection is about the activities of the Dziekanka Students' Art Center and Dziekanka Workshop (Pracownia Dziekanka) in the years 1976-1987. Under these two names was the same place, an extraordinary interdisciplinary artistic and educational laboratory, combining the debuting students of Warsaw's art academies and outstanding artists from Poland and abroad. Around the studio, a unique milieu was created, combining post-Fluxus artists interested in new media and avant-garde theatre ventures, but also painters and sculptors of new expression or punk music bands. The years 1976-1987 is the most intense, though the heterogeneous period in the history of Dziekanka, filled with exhibitions, performances, shows, discussions and social life. During this time Tomasz Sikorski was an active participant in events at Dziekanka, and from 1979 he was the co-director of the institution. Owing to his constant presence and managerial function, Sikorski gathered an extensive collection of photos and other materials documenting the functioning of the initiative, going beyond the definitions of independent galleries.

Vaclovas Aliulis (1921-2015) was a Lithuanian Catholic priest. During Soviet times he participated actively in underground catechisation, and was a lecturer with the Underground Catholic Seminary, which was established to train priests for Catholic parishes in Lithuania, Belarus, Ukraine and other Soviet republics. Aliulis is the author of a number of books and other publications; and during the times of Sąjūdis (the Lithuanian national movement), he was the initiator and organiser of Catholic publishing. He started to collaborate with the Lithuanian Central State Archives from 2003, transferring files from his private papers to the state archives. The documents in the collection show the situation of the Catholic Church and the community of believers in Soviet Lithuania, and Soviet policy on religion.

The collection reflects the variety of religious dissent in communist Romania, and illustrates the underground religious practices and overt religious oppositional activities from the late 1940s until the 1980s. The collection comprises, on the one hand, documents and other cultural artefacts created by various religious denominations and confiscated by the Securitate and, on the other hand, documents created by the secret police. The latter illustrate the intense surveillance and the repressive policies of the secret police directed towards those religious activities that opposed the policies of the communist regime in Romania.

The Áron Márton Memorial Collection in Alba Iulia contains the materials that represent the most complete coverage of the bishop’s life and activity, which offers countless proofs of individual courage and spirit of sacrifice, in the light of his official and private correspondence carried on with the Holy See, the Romanian public authorities, and private persons, and insight not only into his struggle for the survival of the Church and the Catholic faith, but also into the details of the fight for minority and human rights in the twentieth century.