The collections of the National Museum in Krakow, founded in 1879 and largely based on earlier private collections, are a centuries-old record of Poland’s national memory. The exhibition #heritage at the museum’s Main Building (from 23 June), opening ahead of the 41st Session of the UNESCO World Heritage Centre held in Kraków in July, attempts to interpret the museum’s collections and define Polish identity in 2017 AD. The exhibition of around 650 items, divided into categories of geography, language, citizens and customs, presents artworks and archive materials alongside other tangible records of the past.
We will see works by the great visionaries of the 19th and the begining of the 20th centuries Jan Matejko, Stanisław Wyspiański and Jacek Malczewski, artists of the interwar avant-garde including Władysław Strzemiński, artists of the communist period such as Andrzej Wróblewski, and contemporary artists. There are examples of arts and crafts, costumes, coins and banknotes, documents, early texts, and maps of the Republic of Poland and other parts of the world where Polish voyagers, discoverers, artists and architects have made their mark.
“The exhibition is a treasure trove of memories which we visit to inspire us in contemporary times and, most of all, to help us contemplate the kind of heritage we have been bequeathed and how best to add the next chapter in our country’s history,” says Andrzej Szczerski, vice-director of the National Museum in Krakow and curator of the exhibition. (Dorota Dziunikowska, Karnet" monthly)