CURATORSHIP PRAXISES TOWARDS ‘DISPLACED ASSETS’ IN POST-1989 MUSEUM PROJECTS: TWO EXHIBITIONS AT WARSAW’S XAWERY DUNIKOWSKI MUSEUM

Two exhibitions at the Xawery Dunikowski Museumof Sculpture at the Królikarnia Palace, branch of the NationalMuseum in Warsaw: the ‘Inventorying’ Display-ResearchProject, which was a kind of a public inventory of the sculpture collection (2012) and the Exhibition ‘The Estate. Sculptures fromthe collection of the Von Rose family and films and photographsfrom the archive of Zofia Chomętowska’ (2015) are case studiesserving the Author to analyse curatorship practices with respectto the collections whose major part is composed of ‘displacedassets’, first of all from the so-called ‘Regained Territories’.In the words of the Chief Curator at the Królikarnia Museumsince 2011 and the Exhibitions’ Curator Agnieszka Tarasiuk: it isa troublesome collection testifying to a difficult heritage and notyielding to conservation.The paper’s methodological basis is the museum exhibits’provenance research conducted by R. Olkowski, L.M.Kamińska, and M. Romanowska-Zadrożna, while its contextis found in the programme assumptions of the Strategy forthe Operations and Development of the National Museumin Warsaw 2010–2020 worked out by the former NationalMuseum’s Director Piotr Piotrowski. One of its prioritiesis to clarify the origins of the collections of unknown provenance,and settling accounts with their former owners.Furthermore, the question related to constructing museum’sgenealogy and the memory of history of the period immediatelyfollowing WWII in the new socio-political situationin Poland after 1989 is posed. The position for dealing withcollections’ provenance research introduced by P. Piotrowskiwas liquidated following the Director’s dismissal in 2012.The paper forms part of a bigger whole.