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AN EVIDENCE OF CREATIVE SPIRIT.
ARCHITECTURE OF MUSEUM EDIFICES
IN AN INDEPENDENT REPUBLIC OF POLAND

May this Parthenon of arts (…) be a heart
consoling evidence of greatness of an immortal, everlastingly
creative spirit of Poland. Words written in the foundation act
for construction of the National Museum in Warsaw leave
no doubt – culture was perceived by the authorities of the
Second Polish Republic (1918–1945) as extremely important
factor in building the identity of a reborn state. Soon after
regaining independence, constructions of edifices for
theatres and museums were being planned and conducted;
moreover, new institutions were in the process of being
established. It is enough to mention that in the mid-1930s
there were 135 public museums, half of which founded after
1918.
A culture-forming role of public edifices’ construction
was to reinforce an image of the Second Polish Republic
as, firstly, an inheritor of Poland from the time before the
Partitions period, and secondly – a modern state with
ambitions of a regional leadership. First projects directly
continued a style from the turn of the 19th and 20th
centuries. Theatres’ buildings designed in 1924: national
theatre in Warsaw and municipal one in Łódź (the latter
never executed) by Czesław Przybylski featured simplified
classical forms. Similarly, first projects of the National
Museum in Warsaw (Marian Nikodemowicz, 1924) or the
Museum of Pomerania in Toruń (Czesław Przybylski, 1926)
followed the 19th-century tradition of the “museum-palace”
and the “museum – temple of arts”.
The late 1920s and the early1930s marked a significant
turning point; projects of that time are an evidence of
the search for a new style, which combined an individual
reception of modernity with an expression of national
identity. The architects of the Silesian Museum (Karol
Schayer) and the National Museum in Warsaw (Tadeusz
Tołwiński) tried to find their own creative way, so that
both the modern and the “state-building” character of the
edifices could be equally expressed.

