The MEK’s exhibition is not as much about the 19th century countryside as it is about how ethnographers perceived life there. Hence it is worth remembering, while viewing the exhibit, that we are dealing with a proposal, a staged arrangement and a typologisation. The chambers devoted to Kraków, Podhale, education and folk craft workshops are particularly interesting from this perspective. Walk amongst mannequins in the Polish ethnic outfits, which, like colorful Schulzian phantasms, “fall in thick scales of azure, of peacock-parrot green and metallic shimmers, drawing arabesques and lines in the air, existing in the rich and dazzling atmosphere”. Try to uncover the meanings ethnographers gave this reconstructed past, and identify the values they wanted to preserve for future generations.