Is the past for sale?
In Poland, cultural heritage has increasingly become a site where memory, market logic and political power intersect. From urban regeneration projects and nostalgia tourism to digitally-branded cultural platforms and AI-generated public figures, the past is often packaged, optimized and sold.
February 22, 2026 -
Giorgia Maurovich
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History and MemoryIssue 1-2 2026Magazine
Photo of the Palace of Science and Culture in Warsaw. Photo: LifeCollectionPhotography / Shutterstock
On a wall of the Museum of Life under Communism in Warsaw, where objects and images that witnessed the commercial application of graphic design in the socialist era are displayed, a rather curious quote from the propaganda newspaper Dziennik ludowy can be read: “Looking at nice and aesthetic things lets you see beauty, distinguish trash from art.” The slogan, Agnieszka Balcerzak notes in her text “The charm of the PRL: Memory culture, (post)socialist nostalgia and historical tourism in Poland”, fulfils the ironic function of highlighting the subordination of graphics and design to the control of the socialist regime, while emphasizing the absence of their marketing role in a system devoid of competition.
It is a truism to note that art and cultural heritage are always shaped by the material conditions of the societies in which they exist. Yet the economic and social transformations of recent decades have brought about a less obvious and more consequential shift in the administration and commodification of culture and memory.
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commodification of culture, history, memory
