Muzealnictwo (Mar 2021)
A KNIGHT IN THE SERVICE OF ART. HANNA BENESZ IN MEMORIAM (1947–2019)
Abstract
Hanna Benesz graduated from the Institutes: of Art History and of Applied Linguistics at the University of Warsaw. Her whole career launched in 1975 remained inseparably connected with the National Museum in Warsaw, where she worked at the Gallery of European Art curating the Flemish and Dutch collections. She followed all the promotion steps: from assistant to curator. Benesz strongly believed that museum curator’s job was grounded in a perfect knowledge of the collection. Thanks to her research conducted into the paintings amassed in National Museum’s storerooms, she successfully attributed a substantial number of works and identified provenance of many. She studied iconography applying research methods worked out by iconology. Moreover, she focused on the paintings’ technical condition, this occasionally leading to spectacular ‘restorations’, e.g. the identification of a genuine work by Abraham Janssens (ca 1575–1632) the Lamentation of Christ in a forgotten work, previously considered to be a copy. Author and co-author of many exhibitions, she cooperated with museum curators around the world. Her exhibition on Baroque art reached as far as Japan. Benesz’s intention was not only to present the paintings from the National Museum’s collections through a direct contact of visitors with the works, but also in publications, mainly in English and online. As soon as she became curator, together with Maria Kluk she focused on working out the reasoned catalogue Early Netherlandish, Dutch, Flemish and Belgian Paintings 1494–1983 in the Collections of the National Museum in Warsaw and the Palace at Nieborów. Complete Illustrated Summary Catalogue, published in 2016. A year later, the Catalogue was honoured with the main prize in the Sybilla Competition in the category for publications, while the King of the Netherlands awarded Hanna Benesz with the chivalric Order of Orange-Nassau (Oranje-Nassau) of the 5th grade; she was decorated with it by the Ambassador of the Kingdom of the Netherlands during the 20th CODART Congress held at the Warsaw Łazienki Palace. Not only was Hanna Benesz an outstanding museum curator and scholar, but also a trusted friend and a warm empathetic person, sensitive to other people’s misfortunes.
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