Muzealnictwo (Aug 2019)
JACEK MILER 1964–2018. AN ART HISTORIAN WHO BECAME A CIVIL SERVANT
Abstract
Working over 25 years within the changing organizational structures of the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage, he actively contributed to the protection of Polish cultural heritage beyond Poland and the restitution of Polish art works lost during WW II. He cocreated museums dedicated to illustrious Poles: to Juliusz Słowacki in Krements, and to Joseph Conrad – Józef Korzeniowski in Berdychiv, both in Ukraine, as well as to Witold Gombrowicz in Vence, France. He focused on the provision of the institutional system of the preservation of Polish cultural heritage, involving in elaborating donation programmes: Protection of the Cultural Heritage Abroad, Memorial Sites Abroad, Investigation of Polish Wartime Losses, as well as in the establishment of the permanent support to Polish émigré institutions protecting national heritage assets. He participated in the legislative process of the Act on the Restitution of National Cultural Assets of 25 May 2017 and the Act of 12 April 2018 on the Amendments to the Act on Organizing Cultural Activity whose provisions allow to support cultural institutions founded abroad by Polish migrants. As of the mid-1990s, he was involved in the works of numerous committees and expert teams dealing with the protection of shared cultural heritage, e.g. Polish-Belarusian Consultancy Committee on National Heritage, Intergovernmental Polish-Ukrainian Committee for the Protection and Return of Goods Lost and Illegally Displaced during WW II, and the Polish-Lithuanian Group of Experts for the Preservation of Cultural Heritage. For his outstanding merits for the protection of Polish cultural heritage he was awarded many state honours, medals and prizes, this both during his lifetime and posthumously.
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