The date of establishment of the District Museum in Leszno is 1 January 1950. Then, due to political changes, the local government Leszno Region Museum, established in 1947, was nationalised.
Until 1957, the museum was housed in the historic Town Hall; from 1962 to 2021, it was in the former clergy house of the Holy Cross Church at 17 Jana Metziga Square. Since 1962, it has occupied a neighbouring 19th-century tenement house at 16 Jana Metziga Square. From 1993 to 2005, the museum also owned the former Bet Tahara in the Jewish cemetery, where the Judaic Department was located. Since 1993, one of the museum's buildings has been located in the former synagogue at 31 Narutowicza Street (ul. G. Narutowicza 31). Since 1999, the museum has been a local government cultural institution of the Wielkopolskie Province. The museum runs various exhibitions and educational and publishing activities. The museum's Painting Conservation Studio, which has been operating continuously since 1976, guarantees excellent care for the collected works.
The museum preserves, researches, protects, makes accessible and popularises past generations' rich material and spiritual heritage. The core of our collections is made up of valuable artistic, historical and ethnographic memorabilia that bear witness to the culture, history and aspirations of the people of Leszno and the region. In addition to contemporary acquisitions by donation and purchase, they included collections secured after World War II in the Depository of Monuments at the Western Institute of Leszno, donations from local government institutions and silverware and other movable property from a Moravian church taken by the Nazis and revindicated in 1962 from the former German Democratic Republic. Other historical collections depicting the culture of old Leszno include coffin portraits of Calvinist noblemen from St John's Church, portraits of fowler kings, i.e. members of the Leszno marksmen's society from 1715 to 1936, courtly images of representatives of the Leszczyński, Sułkowski and other aristocratic and noble families from the south-western Wielkopolska region.
Alongside these historical collections, which document the possessions of institutions, religious communities and bourgeois houses, the museum has been amassing art collections since its inception. Chief among our collections is a collection of Polish paintings on rural themes of the 19th to 20th century and portrait paintings.
The Judaica collection comprises approximately 100 objects, including religious objects, paintings and prints, and historical memorabilia related to the history of the Jewish community of Wielkopolska.
