Bulletin du Musée National de Varsovie (40.1999)

Mayor Starzyński also named Lorentz head of the newly created Commission
for the Preservation of Warsaw’s Historie Monuments, as well as the Union for
the Promotion of Tourism in Warsaw. Their felicitous professional relations
ąuickly led to the completion of the museum building and the opening of the
outstanding exhibition Warsaw Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow, bringing
prestige to both Lorentz - it was his first exhibition on such a large and
comprehensive scalę - as well as to the mayor, who strove to present his vision
of the city’s development prior to the upcoming elections to the City Council,
sińce he was, as mentioned earlier, chosen mayor by commission. The fact
that Lorentz had convinced the mayor in 1936 about the possibility of
completing the central pavilions III, IV and V - the main part of the National
Museum including its main hall - and the mounting of the exhibition in the

2. Gallery of
Decorative Arts
in the new building
of the National Museum
in Warsaw, 1932

new edifice, taking responsibility for seeing it through - brought not only
essential financial resources to the city, but also municipal support for the
organisation of the construction project. In June 1937 the City Administration
summoned a Museum Building Committee, whose immediate supervisor was
the Executive Committee; the Museum director sat on both of these
committees. Lorentz had already presented a critical analysis of Tadeusz
TołwińskPs design in the autumn of 1935. Yet as the result of the additional
costs of remodelling and the delays that possible changes in the design might
involve, only minor changes were introduced which the architect Antoni
Dygat, heading the construction sińce 1937, could take into consideration.

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