Lecture by Katarzyna Mączewska
20.09.2025 | 15:30
Leon Wyczółkowski District Museum in Bydgoszcz (Audiovisual room), Gdańska 4, Bydgoszcz
The event will be held in Polish.
The Photography Room of the National Museum in Warsaw as an example of a changing display of historical photography within a permanent gallery space
The collections of the National Museum in Warsaw include a unique, nationwide-scale selection of 19th- and early 20th-century photographs. These are works by both renowned Polish photographers and creators of world photography. Since 10 June 2022, for the first time in the Museum’s history, historical photography has been displayed permanently in a specially designed Photography Room, which is part of the Gallery of 19th Century Art. Several times a year, visitors can view photography exhibitions curated from the museum’s rich and diverse holdings, each based on an original concept.
Against the backdrop of existing institutions dedicated to photography, the Photography Room of the National Museum in Warsaw is a unique proposition within an art museum context. Its guiding principle is the uninterrupted display of original period photographs in regularly changing exhibitions. These exceptional displays of historical photography, as part of the Museum’s permanent offer, create an opportunity to reflect on the significance of this medium of visual representation in the 19th and early 20th centuries, as well as its connections to the fine arts. To date, we have prepared thirteen exhibitions, each tackling a different theme and research question, each unique.
Basic bibliography on the Photography Room:
M. Bajbor, D. Jackiewicz, A. Masłowska, K. Mączewska, Gabinet Fotografii w Galerii Sztuki XIX wieku MNW [The Photography Room in the Gallery of 19th Century Art at the National Museum in Warsaw], “Rocznik Muzeum Narodowego w Warszawie. Nowa seria / Journal of the National Museum in Warsaw. New series” 2025, 13(49), 48–77, https://doi.org/10.63538/rmnwns.013.03
Galeria Sztuki XIX Wieku. Przewodnik, Muzeum Narodowe w Warszawie, Warsaw 2022, Sala 106 Gabinet Fotografii, pp. 140–165 / EN version: The Gallery of 19th Century Art. Guidebook, National Museum in Warsaw, Warsaw 2025
Thematic essays for each exhibition in the Photography Room published on the Cyfrowe MNW platform: https://cyfrowe.mnw.art.pl/pl/eseje
Information on the website / current, past, and upcoming exhibitions: https://www.mnw.art.pl/o-muzeum/galer/galeria-sztuki-xix-wieku/gabinet-fotografii/
Katarzyna Mączewska
Art historian, museum professional, and heritage inventory specialist. Curator of the Photography and Iconography Collection at the National Museum in Warsaw. Two-time scholarship holder of the Polish Ministry of Culture and National Heritage. Curator of exhibitions including Bronisław Krystall. Testament (2015–2016, MNW), photographs of Venice in the Gallery of Old Art at MNW, City for Export: Venice (2021, 2023), and co-author of the concept for the scholarly conference Donors to Polish Museums: History and the Present (2018, MNW, Royal Castle in Warsaw). Scientific editor of publications, author of scholarly and popular articles, and a regular collaborator with the Postgraduate Studies Programme at the Institute of Art of the Polish Academy of Sciences, where she teaches workshops and courses on the history and collecting of photography, with a particular focus on MNW holdings. Her research interests include Polish collections of iconography and visual archives from the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the protection and photographic documentation of heritage sites, and collections of botanical iconography from the 19th and early 20th centuries. Since 2022, together with the Photography and Iconography Collection team at MNW, she has co-created the cyclical exhibitions in the Photography Room.