The question of how archaeological exhibitions in Rome inspire new strategies for displaying artifacts from the past was asked by Dr. Monika Stobiecka, archaeologist and art historian of the Faculty of "Artes Liberales" at the University of Warsaw, member of the Academy of Young Scholars of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw.

In an attempt to grasp the transformation of an archaeological find into a museum exhibit, he conducted research in several European museums, including the Ara Pacis Museum in Rome. In her interdisciplinary research, located at the intersection of art history, archaeological theory and history, and museum studies,

Dr. Stobiecka argued that the Ara Pacis Museum is successfully tackling the difficult task of presenting a contemporary image of archaeology to the general public. Unlike traditional institutions, the Ara Pacis Museum does not present visitors with an image of 19th century archaeology with a series of obscure artefacts described in hermetic language, but offers an alternative to conservative exhibition narratives. By using research on the borderline between the humanities and the exact sciences, the museum introduces visitors to the promising direction of archaeometric research; at the same time, by including a contemporary artwork, a mosaic by the Italian artist Mimmo Paladino, it encourages visitors to develop an archaeological imagination - a special kind of sensitivity to ruins, traces, materiality and the past.

The results of the research at the Roman museum have been published in a monograph entitled. The nature of the artefact, the culture of the exhibition. The project of a critical archaeological museum' which was awarded the Anna Zeidler-Janiszewska Prize for the best debut book in the field of cultural studies by the Committee for Cultural Studies of the Polish Academy of Sciences.

Dr. Stobiecka is currently conducting a pilot project of the National Science Centre in Krakow, continuing her research on the interface between the theories of archaeology and contemporary art, which was stimulated by the exhibition at the Ara Pacis Museum in Rome.