Archiwum Profesor Ireny Huml. Warsztat badacza i krytyka sztuki
Archive of Professor Irena Huml. Workshop of a Scholar and Art Critic

Summary/Abstract: A description of the archive kept by Prof. Irena Huml for over 60 years of her activity as historian and art critic. This eminent researcher dealing with Polish twentieth-century applied arts and a specialist on so-called art of objects linked her entire professional life with the Institute of Art at the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw. The private archive, collected for years, was posthumously handed over to the Special Collections at the afore-mentioned Institute of Art. The Prof. Irena Huml archive documents not solely the scholar’s scientific interests but also says a lot about her methods of work. Almost half of the total of archival units is composed of paper folders containing information about artists and designers dealing with applied arts. The resources in question include unique prints amassed for years in the course of scientific studies (exhibition catalogues, folders, posters), photographs of assorted artworks, sometime photographs of artists at work, manuscripts and typescripts of texts concerning their oeuvre, including unissued material, as well as interviews, anecdotes, and correspondence, often private-professional.One of the folios contains exclusively catalogues and photographs, others – handwritten biographies, projects, and letters, whose considerable parts refer to professional plans and conducted work, intermingled with information about private life, descriptions of vacations and the daily travails of an artist active at the time of the socialist shortage economy and associated difficulties with obtaining material indispensable for work. Further folios of the archival resource consist of material concerning Prof. Huml’s scientific work and organisational activity (i.a. a fond on the Gallery functioning alongside the Warsaw branch of the Women’s League): folios containing exhibition scenarios, and synopses of lectures and books).

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