In May 1919, in the face of Bydgoszcz return to the reborn Polish state, part of the collection was moved to Berlin and deposited in the Museum für Völkerkunde.

The museum opened on 5 August 1923, under the tenure of Bernard Śliwiński, city mayor and its first director was Father Jan Klein, a librarian, museologist and historian from Bydgoszcz.

[2] Initially, collections were not extensive, mainly in the field of: Soon a department of Polish art dealing with painting, graphics and sculpture was created.

The management board was mainly led by city counselor Tadeusz Janicki and local painter Kazimierz Borucki took over the direction.

[2] In 1928, an exhibition of paintings by Bydgoszcz painter Walter Leistikow was set up, in which works by Leon Wyczółkowski, living in nearby village of Gościeradz, were also presented.

[3] Just before the invasion of Poland, a campaign to secure some of the museum pieces was carried out: the branch located at Chodkiewicza street moved the exhibits to the main building at the Market Square.

[2] In September 1939, Polish hostages -including Catholic priests- were publicly shot, lined up along the walls of the museum and the Church of St. Ignacy Loyola.

During the war, weapons, numismatics and paintings were added to the museum's collections, handed over by Bydgoszcz citizens threatened by the German authorities.

Throughout the occupation, about 1,500 items were acquired (gifts or purchases), including some exhibits that the Historical Society of the Noteć Region recovered from Berlin.

In this way, the most precious items of the city were saved, among others: Thanks to Kothe's intervention, many valuable objects avoided appropriation and transportation to Nazi Germany.

[2] In the 1940s, a public call to recover Museum items lost during the war was carried out, which helped to gather back several historic objects disseminated.

One of them was to build a new seat of the museum as part of an ambitious plan, designed by Włodzimierz Padlewski (1903-2007) from Sopot, to rebuild the lost western frontage of the Old Market Square: unfortunately, this project was never implemented.

The solution adopted by city authorities lay in using the ancient watermills on Grodzka Street: a comprehensive renovation, ended in July 1964, aimed at suiting the needs of the museum.

[9] On 30 December 2009, by decision of the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage, the District Museum-"Leon Wyczółkowski" in Bydgoszcz was listed on the State Register of Museums (Polish: Państwowy Rejestr Muzeów).

[2] Other departments and laboratories in the museum were vital to the proper functioning of the institution, inter alia, Familiarizing and Education, Inventory, Conservation, Library and workshops.

The most interesting monuments are exhibits from the Stone Age, such as: bone blades, hoes made of reindeer horn, harpoon heads, clay funnel cups and a fragment of a dugout canoe from 2000 BC.

[12] Location: White granary The department, established in 1986, displays collections of folk culture and art, mainly from ethnocultural regions of Pałuki, Kujavia, Krajna, Tuchola Forest, Kashubia and Kociewie.

A vast majority of displays come from Kraków, Warsaw, Poznań, Bydgoszcz and Toruń, to a lesser extent from Wrocław, Katowice, Łódź, Gdańsk or Lublin.

Graphics from the Polish interwar period include works of Kraków and Warsaw art schools as well as Poznań's, Lviv's and Vilnius's.

Graphic charts, drawings and sketches are exhibited, in particular by authors like Walter Leistikow from Bydgoszcz, involved in the Berlin Secession art movement.

Location: Dutch Granary The department collects iconographic and photographic documents and materials related to the history of Bydgoszcz, together with militaria, phaleristics and handicraft items.

The department comprises the following collections: The collection of old Polish painting includes works from the end of the 18th century to 1939, covering several styles It displays works by artists such as: Teodor Axentowicz, Józef Chełmoński, Daniel Chodowiecki, Olga Boznańska, Julian Fałat, Wojciech Gerson, Maurycy Gottlieb, Wlastimil Hofman, Władysław Jarocki, Juliusz Kossak, Franciszek Ksawery Lampi, Jacek Malczewski, Jan Matejko, Piotr Michałowski, Józef Pankiewicz, Władysław Podkowiński, Ferdynand Ruszczyc, Kazimierz Sichulski, Henryk Siemiradzki, Jan Stanisławski, Józef Szermentowski, Wojciech Weiss, Stanisław Wyspiański, Maksymilian Piotrowski, Stefan Filipkiewicz and Antoni Kozakiewicz.

In the sculptures section, one can appreciate exhibits from the 20th century, by artists such as: Xawery Dunikowski, Edward Haupt, Stanisław Horno-Popławski, Jerzy Jarnuszkiewicz, Antoni Kurzawa, Konstanty Laszczka, Ferdinand Lepcke, Władysław Marcinkowski, Adam Myjak, Olga Niewska, Edward Wittig, Aleksander Dętkoś and Bydgoszcz artists (Teodor Gajewski, Michał Kubiak and Piotr Triebler).

This section located at the Exploseum gathers documents related to the activity in Bydgoszcz of the Bromberg Dynamit Nobel AG Factory, exhibiting employee passes, tool tokens, everyday objects dealing with the plant operation.

A noticeable part of the collection has been digitalized, presenting oral history, with memories from the entire WWII period regarding the work at the Bydgoszcz factory.