Treasures of the Baroque
Friday, February 10, 2017 - Sunday, April 23, 2017
The exhibition Treasures of the Baroque. Between Bratislava and Krakow is the result of a collaboration between the National Museum in Krakow and the Slovak National Gallery.
It focuses on the Central European aspects of the Baroque: we will see works by artists who lived in our region yet who remain little known in Poland. As well as artworks from the Bratislava museum collection, the exhibition at the Main Building of the National Museum in Krakow includes items from Hungary, Ukraine and Poland, numbering almost 160 pieces. Authors include the once highly popular and prolific Austrian sculptor Georg Rafael Donner (he abandoned his calling as a priest to pursue a career in the arts), the eccentric author of grotesque head sculptures Franz Xaver Messerschmidt from Southern Germany, and the Slovak painter Jan Kupecký regarded as the greatest Central European portrait artist of his day. We will see the latter in a beautiful self-portrait with his wife and son. The exhibition also features posthumous portraits typical of the Baroque period, still lifes painted with a photographic precision, theatre props and various curiosities, such as crucifixes from the time of the plague. (Dorota Dziunikowska, “Karnet” monthly)
The Main Building
al. 3 Maja 1
The central phenomena of the Polish art of the 20th century, the history of Polish weaponry and uniforms, a gallery of crafts, and a dozen major temporary exhibitions each year.
The quickly expanding collection of the National Museum, set up in 1879, soon needed space that Kraków did not have at that time. That is why the idea to erect a new building that at the same time would commemorate the many years of efforts to regain Poland’s independence was born early in the 20th century. Immediately after the end of the First World War, already in free Poland, funds for the construction of an appropriate seat began to be raised. The construction of the building by the imposing Aleje Trzech Wieszczów, staked out just two decades earlier, began in 1934. Today, the National Museum in Kraków boasts several branches, with no fewer than three permanent galleries in the Main Building alone. Deposited on the ground floor are the collections of militaria: the exhibition Arms and Uniforms in Poland presents the history of the Polish military from the Middle Ages to the Second World War. The Gallery of Decorative Arts boasts collections of fabrics, goldsmithry, glass, ceramics, furniture, musical instruments, and Judaica that let the visitor trace changes in style from the early Middle Ages to the 20th century. The Gallery of 20th-Century Polish Art presents the chronology and key tendencies in painting, sculpture, printmaking, and photography as created by the Polish artists of the previous century. The largest temporary exhibitions of the National Museum in Kraków are organised in specially designed halls.
Tickets to permanent galleries: normal PLN 11, concessions PLN 6, family PLN 20, admission free to permanent exhibitions on Sunday
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