The National Museum turns 161 today! As you enter the exhibition “NMW collects. Purchases from the years 2017-2022”, the first works that you see are related to the museum’s origins and are a symbol of the founders’ activities. Read more.
Warsaw, May 20, 2023 – The exhibition “NMW Collects: Purchases from 2017-2022” presents over 120 diverse exhibits, carefully selected in collaboration with curators from ten collections and departments of the National Museum in Warsaw. These valuable acquisitions were made possible through the efforts of directors, curators, and custodians responsible for the care of various collections, thus expanding and enriching the museum’s entrusted holdings.
The exhibition opens with artifacts of special historical significance to the museum. These include two panels by Florentine painter Cosimo Rosselli, acquired in 2022 for the Collection of European Art. Symbolically, this purchase represents the fulfillment of the museum founders’ vision. Exactly 160 years earlier, when works by old masters from the renowned collection of architect and urban planner Johann Peter Weyer were being sold in Cologne, the honorary director of the Museum of Fine Arts (the predecessor of NMW), Justynian Karnicki, purchased 43 paintings by representatives of various European schools. Among these acquisitions was one of three available panels by Rosselli depicting saints, originally part of a liturgical piece of furniture. Thanks to this recent purchase, three works by the Florentine artist have been reunited within a single collection.
Karnicki’s acquisitions, which laid the foundations of the collection of European paintings, were primarily intended to serve the education of students at the School of Fine Arts in Warsaw, an institution closely linked to the birth of the museum.