The lecture series is dedicated to various phenomena in the history and theory of art. We will try to show how works and artistic practices reflect changing cultural, social, and political contexts. We will learn, among other things, about the fate of restituted works from the collection of the National Museum in Warsaw, transformations in the depiction of the body in art, non-binary, queer, and female artistic perspectives, as well as contemporary ethical dilemmas in museology. Topics will also include reflections on the role of photography and cinema in shaping modern visuality, the problem of colonial heritage, and changing concepts of the original and the copy. The entire series is an invitation to critically reflect on art history as a living, polyphonic field of interpretation and dialogue with the past—and perhaps the future? Detailed schedule of meetings, lecture descriptions, and biographies of the speakers below. 🗓️ Date: Mondays, November 17 - March 9, 6:00 PM ⏰ Duration: approx. 75 min. 🌐 Location: online event, ClickMeeting platform 🎟️ Tickets for individual meetings https://bit.ly/47Pu5vv 🎫 Personal passes for the entire series https://bit.ly/3XzsWC2 Additional information: - Both passes and tickets can only be purchased online. - Pass holders receive the lecture link three times: a week before (except for the first lecture), on the day of the event, and 30 minutes before the lecture starts. - Those who purchased a ticket for a single lecture receive the link at the time of purchase (the link is on the ticket sent to the email address provided during purchase). - Please read the Terms and Conditions https://bit.ly/48QZC0O SCHEDULE - November 17 Great Returns – Restitution of War Losses at the National Museum in Warsaw / Karolina Zalewska In recent years, many works of art looted during World War II have returned to the National Museum in Warsaw. Among them are Marcin Zaleski's Interior of the Cathedral in Milan, Jacek Malczewski's At the Piano, and Portrait of an Elderly Man in a Wig with a Cane by Dutch painter Godfried Schalcken. The history of each of these canvases reflects the tragedy of crimes against culture and the determination of dozens of people who, for decades, tried to recover even a fragment of the identity lost at that time. Karolina Zalewska – graduate of the Institute of Art History at the University of Warsaw. Educator at the National Museum in Warsaw, collaborator of the Department for War Losses at the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage. Since 2008, she has run a company specializing in archival queries and the study of monuments for conservation, architectural, and museum projects. - November 24 "Just naked women!" – What do female nudes tell us about cultural changes? Many European art museums display at least a few large-format female nudes. According to the activist group Guerilla Girls, these nudes constitute 60–85% of all naked figures presented in many modern art galleries. Women in paintings have a clear function: to please the viewer's eye, but they also provide a unique field for reflection on European history. A journey through time and a look at early modern Venuses—by Giorgione, Titian, and Velázquez—as well as modern and contemporary models (often self-portraying artists) will help us understand the close relationship between power and the female body. Sonia Kisza – art historian, author of the book Histeria sztuki. Niemy krzyk obrazów, and the satirical Instagram profile of the same name, columnist for the magazine "Zwierciadło". - December 1 Non-binary Subjectivity in Art and Politics / Dr. hab. Paweł Leszkowicz In 2010, the National Museum in Warsaw hosted the exhibition Ars Homo Erotica, prepared by the author of this lecture. One section of this exhibition, based on the museum's collection, was titled "Transgender." It featured works of art—portraits and self-portraits—representing non-binary or transgender individuals. The lecture will revisit objects from this exhibition and the museum's collection, presenting them in the broader context of androgyny in art history, and above all, the global transphobic politics of the 2020s. Dr. hab. Paweł Leszkowicz – university professor of curatorial studies and history and theory of contemporary art at the Department of Curatorship and Exhibition Realization at the Faculty of Painting, Academy of Art in Szczecin. He studied art history at the Institute of Art History at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań and at the Courtauld Institute of Art in London. He is currently an academic lecturer and researcher, as well as an independent curator specializing in global art and LGBTQ+ studies. He is the author of the exhibition Ars Homo Erotica (2010) at the National Museum in Warsaw and numerous pioneering publications, exhibitions, and conferences on queer art in Poland and the UK. - December 8 Between Oppression and Emancipation – The Male Nude in Modern Art / Dr. hab. Paweł Leszkowicz The lecture will focus on the metamorphoses and various contexts of the male nude in 20th and 21st-century art in Eastern Europe. The male nude was, on one hand, an official genre associated with the symbolism and politics of nationalism and totalitarianism, and on the other, it was banned as associated with pornography and censorship. Since the 1970s, it has become part of the culture of emancipation movements as a medium of feminist and gay art, and after the breakthrough of 1989, it has taken an important place in the art of new democracies. Through the work of selected artists from various Central and Eastern European countries specializing in male nudes, the lecture will present the paradoxical multiplicity of meanings and conflicts associated with this most traditional yet problematic genre of art originating from Greek antiquity. Dr. hab. Paweł Leszkowicz – university professor of curatorial studies and history and theory of contemporary art at the Department of Curatorship and Exhibition Realization at the Faculty of Painting, Academy of Art in Szczecin. He studied art history at the Institute of Art History at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań and at the Courtauld Institute of Art in London. He is currently an academic lecturer and researcher, as well as an independent curator specializing in global art and LGBTQ+ studies. He is the author of the exhibition Ars Homo Erotica (2010) at the National Museum in Warsaw and numerous pioneering publications, exhibitions, and conferences on queer art in Poland and the UK. - December 15 Human Remains in Museums – Sensitive Heritage / Dr. Łukasz Bukowiecki The tradition of storing and displaying human remains in Poland is as old as the history of museology itself: relics of national heroes were collected and shown to the public as early as the first Polish proto-museum—the Temple of Sybilla, founded in 1801 in Puławy by Princess Izabela Czartoryska. It is estimated that today, human remains are found in the collections of every tenth museum in Poland, although they are not always entered into official inventories. Their presence in museums—not only in Poland—is as common as it is often unnoticed and unproblematic, and from a legal perspective—troublesome. The lecture proposes a reinterpretation of this category of museum objects from the perspective of sensitive heritage research undertaken by anthropologist Philipp Schorch. Dr. Łukasz Bukowiecki – cultural studies scholar, historian of culture. Assistant professor and head of studies at the Institute of Polish Culture, University of Warsaw, collaborator of the Center for Social Memory Research at the Faculty of Sociology, UW, where he worked on a postdoctoral contract in the international research project European Colonial Heritage Modalities in Entangled Cities (ECHOES), funded by Horizon 2020, from 2018–2021. He specializes in interdisciplinary research on the cultural history of museums in the context of constructing and protecting cultural heritage, practices of social memory, and the circulation of urban imaginaries. - January 5 So What Is It Actually Made Of? The Journey of Materials in Buildings and Monuments / Marcin Matuszewski How often do we wonder where the material used to build a building or monument comes from? Does it even matter? Looking at the history of the 20th century, we will try to answer these two questions. We will look at non-obvious examples and consider how materiality can influence interpretation. Where did the bricks for rebuilding Warsaw come from, how did they deal with millions of tons of rubble after World War II, what were monuments cast from, and what does Marshal Piłsudski have to do with all this? Marcin Matuszewski – graduate of the Institute of Polish Culture, University of Warsaw, educator and Warsaw city guide, accessibility specialist for people with special needs, works permanently in the Education Department of the National Museum in Warsaw, but also collaborates with many cultural institutions, member of the Śląsk Przegięty collective. - January 12 Abstraction – From Spiritual Beginnings to Contemporary Explorations / Magdalena Kucza-Kuczyńska The lecture will be devoted to abstract art—its beginnings, transformations, and current contexts. The starting point will be the work of Hilma af Klint, an artist who was one of the first to abandon figuration in favor of forms inspired by spirituality and esotericism. We will trace how different paths—from mystical visions to cool conceptualism—shaped the development of abstraction, leading us to Gerhard Richter and his experiments with form, color, and chance. Magdalena Kucza-Kuczyńska – art historian, educator at the National Museum in Warsaw, lecturer at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw and the Higher School of Art, author of texts in the field of art anthropology and art therapy. - January 19 How Photography Changed the Image of the World / Dr. Paulina Kwiatkowska In the second half of the 19th century, the sphere of visual practices was largely dominated by photography as a still young but extremely expansive invention. During the lecture, we will consider the reasons for this popularity and its technological, social, and cultural consequences. We will be interested in the place of this new type of image in relation to traditional visual arts, especially realistic portrait and landscape painting. In this context, photography turns out to be a dynamic medium, and gradually also increasingly democratic—in the period of interest, virtually absent from museums, but very often found in popular illustrated press, at village fairs and city squares, in shop windows or nightclubs. This does not mean that technically reproduced images completely replace those created by human hands, but they certainly complicate the very definition of art and the relationship between reality and its visual representation. We will consider how, under the influence of the new medium, ideas about the world change—both the familiar and seemingly tamed, as well as the distant and previously inaccessible. Dr. Paulina Kwiatkowska – film and cultural studies scholar, collection development specialist at the National Film Archive – Audiovisual Institute. Editor of the film book review section in the monthly "Kino", lecturer at the Institute of Art of the Polish Academy of Sciences and at SWPS University. - January 26 Is It Called "Oriental Art"? On Changing Approaches to Non-European Art / Magdalena Pinker Oriental art? Primitive art? Far Eastern art? Why do museums, collections, and monuments change their names? Over the past decades, the approach to art created outside Europe has evolved. The lecture is devoted to changes in terminology used to describe art created outside Europe—especially in Asia and Africa—and their impact on the perception, interpretation, and display of works. Is the change in nomenclature just a matter of language, or also a change in thinking—a departure from hierarchical, colonial order towards a more pluralistic and inclusive view of world art history? Dr. Magdalena Pinker – curator of the Oriental Art Collection at the National Museum in Warsaw and assistant professor at the Department of Arabic and Islamic Studies, Faculty of Asian and African Cultures (formerly the Faculty of Oriental Studies), University of Warsaw. Author and co-author of exhibitions devoted to Asian art. Her research interests focus on Islamic art and the provenance of Asian collections. - February 2 How Cinematography Changed the Image of the World / Dr. Paulina Kwiatkowska The next stage after photography in the development of techniques for technical image reproduction was cinematography. The birth of cinema is considered to be December 28, 1895, when the Lumière brothers presented their invention in Paris, enabling the recording of moving images on photosensitive film. However, it should be remembered that experiments with "animated photography," as it was often called, had been conducted for several years, with the clear goal of constructing a device that would allow the recording of not only static but also dynamic images of the world. During the lecture, we will consider how cinematography expanded and enriched visual practices at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. Who was the man with the camera? In what world did he move, and how did he record the changes characteristic of the modern era? How did he communicate with contemporary viewers through the new visual language? Dr. Paulina Kwiatkowska – film and cultural studies scholar, collection development specialist at the National Film Archive – Audiovisual Institute. Editor of the film book review section in the monthly "Kino", lecturer at the Institute of Art of the Polish Academy of Sciences and at SWPS University. - February 9 Decoration, Scenography, Architecture of Space—How Theatrical Worlds Change / Dorota Buchwald Many artists creating theater describe their work as "creating a world." Sometimes it is realistic, sometimes a stage version of a universe. However, at a certain point in theater history, viewers are more often invited into an internal, very intimate space of artistic sensitivity. It is difficult to define this change and encapsulate it in terminology that has described theater for centuries. Theater researchers are searching for a new descriptive language, but technology and AI are faster. Dorota Buchwald – theater scholar, practitioner and theorist of theater documentation, editor of theater publications and books, author of texts about theater and interviews published in "Antena", "Teatr", "Dialog", "Notatnik Teatralny", and "Pamiętnik Teatralny", originator and editor of the electronic Encyclopedia of Polish Theater and the project "Public Theater. Performances", manager and participant in scientific projects and grants on economics and management in artistic institutions, playwriting, theater architecture, reception of William Shakespeare's works. Member of the Polish Society for Theater Research. Director of the Zbigniew Raszewski Theater Institute in Warsaw from 2014–2018. - February 16 Art History in Comics: Batman, Asterix, Michelangelo, and Others / Dr. Dawid Głownia What connects Captain Marvel with Michelangelo, Asterix with Théodore Géricault, Tintin with Hokusai? Batman with Edward Hopper? Sandman with Alphonse Mucha? It would seem not much, but each of these artists, through their works, has appeared in comics with these characters. During the lecture, Dawid Głownia will present the history of the use of traditionally understood works of art (mainly paintings, but not only) by comic creators—almost from the beginning of this medium to the present day. We will look at both American and European comics, covers and panels, mainstream and niche, as well as various creative practices—from treating paintings as reference materials, through their adaptation to achieve a "cool factor," to using these visual quotes to introduce additional meanings into comics. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the meeting will be an opportunity to closely examine fascinating comic panels. Dr. Dawid Głownia – PhD in art studies, employee of the Institute of Journalism and Social Communication at the University of Wrocław. He struggles with work-life balance, as he is both scientifically and as a hobby involved in the history of Japanese cinema, world genre cinema, comic history (mainly American), media archaeology, and the sociology of (pop) culture. In his free time, he runs the blog and Facebook fanpage Pan Optykon. - February 23 Memory Practices in Polish Museums / Sara Herczyńska We all agree that museums and other cultural institutions can co-create historical policy because they produce various narratives about the past. We rarely consider the exact mechanisms by which they do this. During the lecture, we will look at ways of constructing historical narratives in exhibitions. We will go back to 2004, when the "museum boom" began in Poland, learn about its context and the inspirations of the creators of those institutions. Finally, we will look at what changes we can currently see in the Polish museum landscape and how these institutions respond to current crises. Dr. Sara Herczyńska – cultural studies scholar, assistant professor at the Institute of Polish Culture, University of Warsaw. She is interested in museums, memory, and Polish contemporary art. She has collaborated with Zachęta – National Gallery of Art and the Adam Mickiewicz Museum of Literature in Warsaw. - March 2 Capitalist Realism of Polish Transformation / Dr. hab. Magda Szcześniak After 1989, new genres and types of images appeared on the streets of Polish cities and on Polish screens: billboards, Western films and series, illustrations in new magazines, TV commercials. What role did images play in Poland's economic and social transformations? The images that appeared at the turn of the 1980s and 1990s are considered merely a symptom of economic changes. However, during the lecture, Magda Szcześniak will show that they actively participated in the processes of establishing the free market in Poland. The changes in Polish visual culture were largely related to the implementation of a new economic system, and thus also to the main actor of the free market scene—the middle class. New images are produced largely with the (still uncertain) new class in mind—they tell about its formation, advertise products associated with the middle class, create a landscape associated with urbanity and modernity, and in the second half of the 1990s reveal conflicting aesthetic visions of the middle class. The visual sphere thus becomes an area legitimizing the changing class structure and ideas of normality. Dr. hab. Magda Szcześniak – assistant professor at the Institute of Polish Culture, University of Warsaw, Deputy Director for Research. Historian of 20th-century culture, researcher of visual culture. Author of the books Poruszeni. Awans i emocje w socjalistycznej Polsce (2023) and Normy widzialności. Tożsamość w czasach transformacji (2016). - March 9 When Did Copying Become Bad? / Dr. Marek Płuciniczak Can a copy be considered more valuable than the original? From the perspective of the contemporary viewer, such a statement sounds blasphemous, but in the early modern era, the greatest art lovers would have agreed. During the lecture, we will consider how copies were perceived centuries ago. How is it possible that emperors and kings commissioned such objects for their collections, and artists became famous precisely by imitating the works of other masters? We will look at the moment of change—search for symptoms of growing skepticism towards copies, and finally their rejection as unwelcome guests in museum collections. Dr. Marek Płuciniczak – art historian, painting curator at the Royal Łazienki Museum in Warsaw. Graduate of the Interfaculty Individual Studies in the Humanities at the University of Warsaw. He defended his doctoral dissertation entitled Copies in Art Literature and Collecting Practices 1550–1650 at the Faculty of Cultural Studies, UW. From 2013–2025, he was associated with the National Museum in Warsaw, where he headed the Education Department. He specializes in old painting and gra Coordination: Marcin Matuszewski / Education Department
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