Art History, Political Legitimacy and Royal Heritage Management. Tadeusz Mańkowski and a Historic Interior Exhibition in Wawel Royal Castle, 1945–1951
Art History, Political Legitimacy and Royal Heritage Management. Tadeusz Mańkowski and a Historic Interior Exhibition in Wawel Royal Castle, 1945–1951

Summary/Abstract: The article is devoted to the conceptual genesis of the exhibition of historic rooms in the Wawel Royal Castle in Cracow in the late 1940s and early 1950s, i.e. the period when the foundations of the Polish socialist state as a satellite of the USSR were being laid. At that time, the castle housed a state museum headed by the art historian Tadeusz Mańkowski (1878–1956). This was a crucial time in the history of the castle’s musealisation. On the one hand, the post-war opening of the castle to the public resulted in the process of designing new interiors necessitated by the absence of the famous Jagiellonian tapestries (evacuated abroad in 1939). On the other hand, the socialist authorities recognised Wawel as a “monument of national culture”. This official status influenced the direction taken by Mańkowski when designing the exhibition of historical interiors. He emphasised objects related to the history of the Polish state, deliberately giving the exhibition a “native” character. This was in line with the legitimisation policy of the state authorities at the time, which highlighted their roots in national history while limiting the evidence of Western culture’s influence on Poland.

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