Muzealnictwo (Aug 2018)
AN EVIDENCE OF CREATIVE SPIRIT. ARCHITECTURE OF MUSEUM EDIFICES IN AN INDEPENDENT REPUBLIC OF POLAND
Abstract
May this Parthenon of arts (…) be a heart consoling evidence of greatness of an immortal, everlastingly creative spirit of Poland. Words written in the foundation act for construction of the National Museum in Warsaw leave no doubt – culture was perceived by the authorities of the Second Polish Republic (1918–1945) as extremely important factor in building the identity of a reborn state. Soon after regaining independence, constructions of edifices for theatres and museums were being planned and conducted; moreover, new institutions were in the process of being established. It is enough to mention that in the mid-1930s there were 135 public museums, half of which founded after 1918. A culture-forming role of public edifices’ construction was to reinforce an image of the Second Polish Republic as, firstly, an inheritor of Poland from the time before the Partitions period, and secondly – a modern state with ambitions of a regional leadership. First projects directly continued a style from the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. Theatres’ buildings designed in 1924: national theatre in Warsaw and municipal one in Łódź (the latter never executed) by Czesław Przybylski featured simplified classical forms. Similarly, first projects of the National Museum in Warsaw (Marian Nikodemowicz, 1924) or the Museum of Pomerania in Toruń (Czesław Przybylski, 1926) followed the 19th-century tradition of the “museum-palace” and the “museum – temple of arts”. The late 1920s and the early1930s marked a significant turning point; projects of that time are an evidence of the search for a new style, which combined an individual reception of modernity with an expression of national identity. The architects of the Silesian Museum (Karol Schayer) and the National Museum in Warsaw (Tadeusz Tołwiński) tried to find their own creative way, so that both the modern and the “state-building” character of the edifices could be equally expressed.
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