MARIAN MINICH (1898‒1965)

• Authors: Kurc-Maj, Paulina

Abstracts

EN

Marian Minich was born on the 21st December 1898 in Baligród near Lesko, died on the 6th of July 1965 in Łódź. For thirty years, excluding the World War II period, he was a director of the Art Museum in Łódź. In 1929, he graduated from the John Casimir University in Lviv, history of art faculty. He worked there from 1928, first as an assistant of Professor Władysław Kozicki, then of Professor Władysław Podlacha. In 1932, he defended his doctoral thesis on the oeuvre of Andrzej Grabowski (published in 1957). He was granted a university award while still a student for his study The Concept of Art by Wölfflin, whose methodology influenced future exhibition concepts of Marian Minich. From the late 1920s, he was writing as an art critic for Lviv newspapers. In 1935, he assumed the position of the director of the Art Museum in Łódź (at the time: the J. and K. Bartoszewicz Museum of History and Art). Among his major achievements was not only a remarkable expansion of museum collection, but also a transformation of the museum into an institution devoted exclusively to art, with a significant representation of contemporary art. In the uneasy post-war years, he managed to sustain this direction, both before and after the tightening of cultural policies in the socialist realism era. In 1948, together with the first post-war permanent exhibition, the Art Museum in Łódź opened thanks to him the “Neoplastic Room” by Władysław Strzemiński. Marian Minich was also a persistent defender of the avant-garde, and strived to make it an integral part of conceptual programme for any art museum. From the years 1946/1947 to 1951/1952, he taught art history at the University of Łódź. His professional experience as a museum director has been described by him in a book Szalona galeria (published in 1963); his article O nową organizację muzeów sztuki (1966) he devoted to museum issues.

Keywords

EN

Marian Minich (1898–1965); Art Museum in Łódź; Neoplastic Room; contemporary art; organisation of art exhibition

• Publisher: Krajowy Ośrodek Badań i Dokumentacji Zabytków
• Journal: Muzealnictwo
• Year: 2018
• Volume: 59
• Pages: 163-174

Dates

published

2018-08-07

Contributors

author

Kurc-Maj, Paulina

Identifiers

DOI

10.5604/01.3001.0012.2320