A lecture of the Bydgoszcz Academy of Art
10.05.2017, 6pm
The collection of the Polish modern art in the Toruń Museum is a unified whole containing the works that were created in the period from the end of the 18th century until 1939.
The Toruń collection was developed on the basis of knowledge and experience of the local art historians, taking into consideration the cultural policy of the state, significantly affecting the objectives and the financial capacity of the museum. In the 1940s and 1950s, the collection was supposed to be a collection of national, supraregional importance. The state, at the time the People’s Republic of Poland, as the main and only patron and originator of the idea of collecting – understood as storing of the cultural achievements, often without any considerate selection – established the basis for the collection. The greatest merit in creating the collection of the art of the second half of 20th century belongs to two creators and maintainers of the collection: Halina Załęska, in the years 1947-1977, and Andrzej Sciepuro, in 1970s, 1980s and 1990s.
The image of Polish painting and sculpture in the Regional Museum in Toruń is a decent representation of what was important, interesting and unique in Polish art. It presents issues and figures that brought into the European art of the 20th century values that are typically Polish and universal as well, being the sum of the perception of the world by the artists in Central-Eastern Europe.
Anna Kroplewska-Gajewska

Anna Kroplewska-Gajewska – born in 1963, art historian (Catholic University of Lublin), museologist — curator of the collection of Polish modern art in the Regional Museum in Toruń. The author of numerous exhibitions, texts about art and catalogues. She’s been dealing with the artistic environment of Toruń in the twentieth century, especially in the years 1920-1939. Member of the Association of Art Historians and the POKAZ Critics Club in Warsaw.