The director of the musem, Andrzej Szczerski, has told the media that the exhibition ‘Golden Fleece – the Art of Georgia’, which is to open in March, is to be the first ever cross-section of Georgian art showcased in Poland. It will feature about 700 items from the antiquity to the present.
A joint project with Georgia’s leading art institutions, the exhibition will also focus on the long-standing ties between Georgia and Poland and present the achievements of Poles who lived in George as exiles or settled there out of their free will and pursued their artistic activity in that country.
The other major international exhibition is to be devoted to the European Rennaisance as seen through the mirror of the motif of the putto, a figure in a work of art depicted as a male child, usually naked and very often winged, that represented a baby angel in religious art. The show will include drawings, sculptures, paintings, ceramic objects and textiles.
Among next year’s highlights, Szczerski also listed an exhibition showcasing modernist trends in Polish art after the 1989 democratic transformations.
Looking back at 2023, the director of the National Museum in Kraków said that it saw an all-time record in attendance figures, with 1.6 million visitors to the museum, 200.000 more than in 2022. The top crowd-pulling events were an exhibition devoted to Jan Matejko, which marked the 185th anniversary of the artist’s birth and the 130th anniversary of his death, and a show of paintings by Tamara Łempicka (1898-1980).
(mk/tf)