Instytut Historii Sztuki <Posen> [Hrsg.]: Artium Quaestiones (12.2001)

KOLEKCJE MUZEALNE WSPÓŁCZESNEGO MALARSTWA I RZEŹBY POLSKIEJ

329

MUSEUM COLLECTIONS OF CONTEMPORARY POLISH PAINTING
AND SCULPTTJRE: A COMPARATIYE ANALYSIS OF THE COLLECTIONS
OF THE MUSEUM OF ART IN ŁÓDŹ, THE NATIONAL MUSEUM
IN WROCŁAW, AND THE NATIONAL MUSEUM IN CRACOW
Summary
The subject of the article is a comparative analysis of the collections of Polish painting
and sculpture of the 1980s and 1990s housed in the Museum of Art in Łódź, the National
Museum in Wrocław, and the National Museum in Cracow. The analysis focuses on the es-
sential features of the collections which determine their individual character. Thus, the ar-
ticle makes an attempt at an overview of each collection and deliberately omits a variety of
factors influencing the practice of art collecting in a museum while taking into account the
process of collecting, which reveals the premises of the “inner” discourse of a given collec-
tion understood as a sort of materialisation of a specific field of art history.
The context for the comparison of the collections in ąuestion is the issue of the dis-
course of Polish art of the 1980s and 1990s, an issue formulated in theoretical statements
of art history and criticism as well as in confrontation with the individual tradition and
programme of each collection. The differences revealed in the course of the analysis make
it possible to seei the collections of contemporary Polish painting and sculpture in the
scrutinised museums as dynamie entities, each of a specific character and each interpret-
ing the problematic of contemporary art in its own way; entities which have emerged in
the context of individual strategies and programmes of art collecting.