Friday, 21-June-2024
I grew up visiting the Museum of Fine Art in Boston regularly. With my Mother, my Father, my Grandparents. The soaring building, the countless galleries and halls, and the maze of corridors hiding treasures as innumerable as they were invaluable.
In the back of my mind, I judge all museums against the MFA. Their scale, their grandeur, their collections and their curation. It’s a punishing bar, though I like to think I’m contemplative enough to not hold any of them in contempt for not living up to that which I grew up with.
All that is to say, the Warsaw Art Museum was staggering. It was huge, easily the largest museum that I’ve been to so far on this trip. I wouldn’t quite say that it’s larger than the MFA, or as expansive, if only because it’s missing the hidden sub-basements of my memory… but it was absolutely impressive, and simply an amazing experience to explore!
To belabor my point – I didn’t see the entire museum in a single sitting. It took me two visits (though both on the same day) to fully explore the Warsaw art museum – One chunk of time in the morning, and another in the later afternoon. Seriously – it was that lovely and that huge.
I’ll split this post up as best I can, to avoid creating an overwhelming monolith of a blog entry… starting, as is traditional, at the beginning – with a rather lovely and well appointed exhibit on Greek antiquities and art! This exhibit definitely reminded me of the collection and curation of the MFA, and absolutely helped cement the similarities in my mind. One really interesting section was their funerial exhibit, showing marble coffins – while the subject matter was interesting, I specifically appreciated the curation – the area was down a small flight of stairs, with walls of black marble that noticably contrasted to the bright white walls of the above-ground exhibit. Really beautifully done.
Hot on the heels of ancient Greece, comes ancient Egypt – the second pillar to all antiquities collections. The Warsaw museum, unsurprisingly, had a beautiful collection here, with some really interesting papyrus scrolls, something I hadn’t really seen many of before, at least in my current memory. Additionally, they had a really cool exhibition on the Faras Cathedral – a large cathedral from ancient Nubia that the Warsaw Museum had sponsored an expedition to. Check out the pictures, but I’ve also added in a wiki link for some interesting further reading… if my dear readers feel up for a bit of extra light reading!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faras_Cathedral
From there, we trend back toward the European side of things – the art of the dark ages. Church art – paintings commissioned by the church to show off specific scenes from the bible, for display in specific churches. This part I sort of glazed over, since it’s not particularly interesting to me and didn’t seem particularly unique.
Here’s where I took a break to let my mind rest a bit, to go see some other sights around Warsaw, and to recover for the big parts of the museum yet to come.
Those parts held quite a bit of art that appealed a bit more to my tastes – the representational landscapes, the peasant-life, and other beautiful rural paintings of adventurous vistas that I just wish I could step straight into. And some that I would prefer not to step into – scenes from conflict around Warsaw, historic pieces that helped me understand a bit more of the history of the city and its peoples, and even some critical pieces that’ll come up in future blog posts! One good example is Bellotto’s Zamku, which was critical in rebuilding the Old Town of Warsaw after its systemic destruction at the hands of the German Army in World War II.
More and more galleries… I fell into a bit of hyptnosis, walking from one gallery to the next, taking in all the paintings and all the history. Time marched on in acrylic and oils, but I seemed to be stuck in amber… just watching the galleries drift by. It wasn’t a bad thing, though – I was enjoying walking, enjoying learning, and just appreciating the opportunity to be present in the moment.
The last gallery of the day was a special exhibition on Surrealism. Not quite my cup of tea, as I’ve probably mentioned once or twice, but still enjoyable from the learning perspective… and my friend Kika had recommended it pretty strongly, so I took the little time I had left before the museum closed to ensure a good walk through of the views… enjoying those pieces I enjoyed, and passing by those that didn’t quite speak to me.
