The Gallery of Polish Art Under the State Art Collections. From Idea to Realisation

Abstract

The vision for a National Art Gallery emerged with the inception of Polish museology and would return over the following centuries in various scale and under different names. One of these names was Gallery of Polish Art, as envisioned by Mieczysław Treter, the director of the State Art Collections. His successor and heir to the project of the Gallery under the purview of the State Art Collections was Alfred Lauterbach, and it was he who would be encumbered with the difficult role of apologist for the institution. The aim of the paper is to reconstruct the history of the Gallery of Polish Art on the basis of archival and press materials, beginning with its conception, through to the gallery’s opening in 1932, and up to the collection’s long-term loan to the National Museum in Warsaw in 1938.