National Museum in Wroclaw
Muzeum Narodowe we Wrocławiu
pl. Powstańców Warszawy 5, 50-153 Wrocław
Director: mgr Mariusz Hermansdorfer
tel. (+48 71) 372 51 50,372 51 51, 372 51 53, 372 51 56
fax (+48 71) 343 56 43
www.mnwr.art.pl; www.mn.wroclaw.pl

Opening hours: Closed Mondays and Tuesdays; Wednesdays, Fridays 10am-4pm; Thursdays 9am-4pm; Saturdays, Sundays 10am-6pm.

The Wroclaw National Museum is housed in a building designed by K. F. Endell in the Dutch Neo-Renaissance style and constructed in 1883-6, the seat of the Silesian Regency until 1939.

Opened in 1946 as a State Museum, it was given the profile-defining name of the Silesian Museum in 1950 and was elevated to the status of a National Museum in 1970.

The holdings include the possessions of German museums and palaces that survived in 1945, parts of the Polish collections transferred to Poland from Lvov and Kiev as well as post-war acquisitions. The Museum's three separate galleries, the Gallery of the Twelfth to Fifteenth Century Art, the Gallery of the Sixteenth to Nineteenth Century Art and the Gallery of Decorative Arts and Technological Culture, house the following collections: twelfth to fifteenth century Silesian sacred, architectural, tomb and altar stone sculpture, including the sarcophagus of Henryk IV and a 12th century tympanum; Silesian medieval art, including the fourteenth century sculptures from the circle of Madonnas on Lions; Polish and European painting, with Renaissance epitaphs, a collection of Sarmatian Baroque portraits from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, a group of paintings by M. Willmann, a collection of paintings by Lvov-based painters and of the nineteenth century German paintings; prints and drawings, including a comprehensive collection of drawings by Lvov artists, Silesian iconography, seventeenth century Flemish and nineteenth and twentieth century German prints; sculpture, with Silesian Baroque exhibits; decorative arts and crafts, including a collection of ancient glass, nineteenth century Silesian glass and Silesian pewter; objects of material culture, such as Silesian guild utensils; numismatics and seals, including a collection of Silesian coins. The Museum also boasts an extensive collection of Polish modern art. Representing the key trends to have emerged between the 1910s and the 1990s, the collection features the most interesting achievements of avant garde artists who followed in the footsteps of expressionists and surrealists and of the adherents of formism, constructivism as well as structural and geometrical abstraction. On display are works by the Polish cubist Tadeusz Makowski; Stanislaw Ignacy Witkiewicz, one of Poland's most original and versatile artists; Leon Chwistek, the leading theoretician of formism; Henryk Stazewski, the co-founder of the top artistic groups (BLOK, PRAESENS, A.R.) of the inter-war period; Marek Wlodarski, a surrealist member of the Lvov ARTES group; Zygmunt Menkes, Rajmund Kanelba and Eugeniusz Zak, the artists associated with École de Paris; leading representatives of the CRACOW GROUP, including Tadeusz Brzozowski, Maria Jarema, Kazimierz Mikulski and Jonasz Stern; colourists, including Jan Cybis, Eugeniusz Geppert, Artur Nacht-Samborski and Piotr Potworowski. The Museum has unique collections of works by Magdalena Abakanowicz and Jan Lebenstein as well as by artists specialising in happenings, performance and environment art, notably Jozef Szajna, Jerzy Beres and Wladyslaw Hasior. Of note is also a review of trends in modern art of the last years of the twentieth century, with works by Edward Dwurnik, Jerzy Kalina, Jaromir Aleksiun, Eugeniusz Get-Stankiewicz and others. Visitors can also see a collection of glass and ceramics by the artists of the inter-war period Stanislaw Jagmin and Konstanty Laszczka, by the artists affiliated with the Warsaw Artistic Cooperative lad, and by glass designers, including Zbigniew Horbowy and others. On view are also compositions by Albin Tomaszewski, the Polish forerunner of glass sculpting.

Permanent exhibitions: "Silesian Stone Sculpture of the Twelfth through Fifteenth Century"; "Silesian Art of the Fourteenth to Sixteenth Century"; "Silesian Art of the Sixteenth to Nineteenth Century"; "Polish Art of the Seventeenth to Nineteenth Century"; "Polish Modern Art"; "Magdalena Abakanowicz"; "Silesian Tombstone Sculpture of the Fifteenth to Eighteenth Century" (exhibited in St Mary Magdalene Church).

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