In a world wracked by war and atrocity, what can museums do to serve the cause of peace? This talk answers this question by retracing the history of the world’s first peace museum and its remarkable founder, the Polish-Jewish millionaire Jan Bloch.

The lecture examines the origins, exhibitions, and legacy of the world’s first peace museum. Founded in Lucerne at the turn of the twentieth century, the Internationales Kriegs- und Friedensmuseum displayed Krupp cannons and Roman battle armor alongside arbitration treaties and Nobel Prize diplomas. Its patrons ranged from Russian peace activists and Swiss military officers to English journalists and French panorama artists. Drawing on a broad range of archival sources, including engineering blueprints, aerial photographs, and artists’ renderings, the lecture will reconstruct the program of this lost museum and assess the visual arguments for peace that it advanced.