Under the document, the two institutions will work closely together in the organization of exhibitions, concerts, conferences and workshops, as well as the exchange of publications, officials said.
Marie Lavandier, president of France's Centre des Monuments Nationaux, said the agreement, which was signed at Nohant on June 24, marked “Chopin’s symbolic return to the House of George Sand, the place where he created many of his masterpieces, and which was also a creative refuge for many brilliant Romantics.”
She added: “It is also an important day for Poland, France and Europe, for an agreement of this kind, which makes it possible to link the past and our common heritage with close cooperation between the countries, is one of the foundations of our common European future."
A statue of the great Romantic composer Fryderyk Chopin (1810-1849) in Warsaw's Łazienki Park. Photo: masterekpixabay.comCC0 Creative Commons via Wikimedia Commons
Artur Szklener, director of Poland's National Chopin Institute, said: "Walking through the garden of Nohant, it is hard not to have the impression that the music of mazurkas, waltzes, but also epic ballads or heroic polonaises is coming from the open window on the first floor. And yet the road from Żelazowa Wola near Warsaw to Nohant was by no means straightforward or obvious."
He added: "At the time of the birth of the son of a French tutor and a poor Polish noblewoman, it certainly never even crossed anyone's mind that he would ever settle in Nohant, which became a kind of melting pot of the artistic life of the era, and at the same time the place that most reminded him of his native Poland."
Chopin and French writer George Sand spent almost nine years together, staying in Nohant for half of the year and the other half in Paris.
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Source: National Chopin Institute (NIFC)