Objects at MNK Szołayscy

“Objects. Gallery of Polish Design of the 20th and 21st centuries” is a continuation of the story of material culture and everyday belongings, started in the Gallery of Decorative Art in the Main Building of the MNK. Objects are invisible companions of societal changes, bearing witness in their entirety to the position of human civilization at any given time.

The gallery presents Polish design, separate from fine arts and decorative art, yet closely connected to them from the very beginning. The exhibition gathers groups of objects representing important phenomena in design, from pioneering activities in the era of Young Poland (Polish Applied Arts Society [Towarzystwo Polska Sztuka Stosowana], Kraków Workshops [Warsztaty Krakowskie]), through the following decades of the 20th century (modernism and avant-garde in the Second Polish Republic, the times of the PRL (Polish People’s Republic), the period of transformation after 1989), to the present day.

The exhibition presents, interchangeably, about 350 exhibits, which are part of a huge and constantly developed collection of designs in the collections of the National Museum in Krakow. Delicate and light-sensitive objects, in particular clothing and fabrics, are replaced by a selection of new ones. This creates an opportunity for thematic presentations, illustrating selected phenomena or profiles of artists.

Located on the first floor of a tenement house at Plac Szczepański, the exhibition is a preview of a comprehensive presentation of Polish design, architecture, and urban planning, which is planned for the new MNK Cracovia branch.

Curatorial team: Andrzej Szczerski, Magdalena Czubińska, Alicja Kilijańska, Bożena Kostuch, Joanna Kowalska, Monika Paś

Arrangement: Magdalena Paleczna

Coordination: Olga Pawlak

Co-financed by the Minister of Culture and National Heritage

Project title: “OBJECTS. Gallery of Polish Design of the 20th and 21st centuries ” and “SECTIONS. Gallery of Polish Architecture of the 20th and 21st Centuries”

Co-financing value: PLN 192 760,51, total cost: PLN 290 025,75