The Leon Wyczółkowski Regional Museum () is an ensemble of cultural institutions which have been first created in 1923 in the city of Bydgoszcz, Poland.
Location The seat of the museum is located at 4, Gdańska Street, in downtown district. The historic building was originally part of the former monastery of the Poor Clares. The edifice has been used as a municipal hospital and has received an additional wing along Gdańska street in 1878, with Neo-Renaissance and Mannerism styles.
History
Prussian period The institution inherits the traditions of a Prussian association, Historical Society of the Noteć Region () which, from 1880 to 1902, was devoted to collecting historical collections and researching the history of the city of Bromberg and its region. From 1902 to 1945, the society operated as a historical branch of the German Society of Arts and Science in Bydgoszcz (). The collections were located in the former monastery of the Poor Clares' Church and were open to the public from 30 November 1890. The curator until 1920 was Konrad Kothe, a citizen of Bydgoszcz and a naturalist with some museum management practice. In May 1919, in the face of Bydgoszcz return to the reborn Polish state, part of the collection was moved to Berlin and deposited in the Museum für Völkerkunde.
Interwar period Taking over the municipal council on 20 January 1920, Polish authorities strove to open a museum for the city. They identified as first location a tenement house on the western frontage of the Old Market Square, at No.2, abutting to the Church of St. Ignacy Loyola (razed in 1940), which used to house the Municipal Savings Bank. The museum opened on 5 August 1923, under the tenure of Bernard Śliwiński, city mayor and its first director was Father Jan Klein, a librarian, museologist and historian from Bydgoszcz.
Initially, collections were not extensive, mainly in the field of: archeology, the richest section, with several thousand items; history, collecting relics from city craft guilds and militaria; numismatics; ethnography. Soon a department of Polish art dealing with painting, graphics and sculpture was created. The first two directors Father Jan Klein (1923-1925) and Tadeusz Dobrowolski (1925-1927) dedicated their energy to expand this section. Hence, they acquired works of Teodor Axentowicz, Julian Fałat, Józef Pankiewicz, Jacek Malczewski or Wojciech Weiss. A parallel collection was initiated, aiming at local artists, such as Maksymilian Piotrowski. At its heyday in 1929, the museum possessed 195 paintings and 28 sculptures: it grandly benefited from the attention of the president of Bydgoszcz Bernard Śliwiński.
From 1926 onwards, the activities of the museum were reduced and the staff was reduced. The management board was mainly led by city counselor Tadeusz Janicki and local painter Kazimierz Borucki took over the direction. In 1928, an exhibition of paintings by Bydgoszcz painter Walter Leistikow was set up, in which works by Leon Wyczółkowski, living in nearby village of Gościeradz, were also presented.
The arrival of Leon Barciszewski as a new mayor in 1932, brought back a new life to the activity of the institution. In 1933, an exhibition for the 10th anniversary of the museum was organized, gathering souvenirs and objects narrating the history of Bydgoszcz.
In 1937, as dictated in his will, Leon Wyczółkowski donated his works to the museum, thus greatly increasing its collection. The donation comprised about 400 paintings, graphics, drawings and sketches of the artist, including the equipment of his lithography studio. The same yeat Krakow artist Konstanty Laszczka donated a collection of sculptures. Both contributions were displayed in July 1937 in the building of the former orphanage at Chodkiewicza street, then used for educational purposes.
At the end of August 1939, the collection of the municipal Museum registered 6,803 items: half of which listed in the archeology department; 1900 objects in the art section; 873 items in the numismatics area; 210 in the craft and Bydgoszcz history; 200 in the ethnography department, including African items; 160 in the medalist area; 150 in the militaria section.
In addition to the permanent collections, the museum also conducted exhibitions. From 1923 to 1939, about 120 temporary exhibitions were set up and a new permanent exhibition was realized, named as City Gallery. In order to make attractive to the general public the work of local artists, an annual exhibition called the Bydgoszcz Salon, in reference to the Paris Salon, was established in 1936.
From 1934 until 1939, the management of the museum was associated with the Artistic and Cultural Council in Bydgoszcz (), whose task was to coordinate and care for artistic and cultural activities in the city. On the eve of the outbreak of World War II, the Bydgoszcz Municipal Museum was an important art center, the seat of many cultural and artistic societies and a meeting place for the cultural activists.
Period of the German occupation (1939–1945) Just before the invasion of Poland, a campaign to secure some of the museum pieces was carried out: the branch located at Chodkiewicza street moved the exhibits to the main building at the Market Square. Once occupied, Bydgoszcz was taken over by German administration which designated a new Museum curator, Willem Drost from Gdańsk. In 1940, the post of director was taken over by the former collection custodian, Konrad Kothe and the custodian position remained to Kazimierz Borucki. In September 1939, Polish hostages -including Catholic priests- were publicly shot, lined up along the walls of the museum and the Church of St. Ignacy Loyola. In the spring of 1940, Nazi authorities pulled down the entire western frontage of the Old Market Square, thus razing the tenement house housing the museum: collections were moved to a pawnshop building at Pocztowa street.
During the war, weapons, numismatics and paintings were added to the museum's collections, handed over by Bydgoszcz citizens threatened by the German authorities. Throughout the occupation, about 1,500 items were acquired (gifts or purchases), including some exhibits that the Historical Society of the Noteć Region recovered from Berlin. To some extent, minor exhibitions were conducted (seven exhibitions between 1941 and 1944).
Thanks to the activities of both Konrad Kothe (the German director) and Borucki (custodian), a number of art pieces were salvaged from destruction, especially sacred items: some religious objects from the city temples were hidden in the museum, while some were placed in hiding places in secret compartments or hidden among office furniture. In this way, the most precious items of the city were saved, among others: The Image of Our Lady of Beautiful Love of the cathedral; Maksymilian Piotrowski 's paintings, St. Ignatius of Loyola and Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary from the Church of St. Ignacy Loyola, before its destruction in 1940; a painting from the basilica of the Blessed Virgin Mary of the Immaculate Conception of the monastery of Górka near Łobżenica. Thanks to Kothe's intervention, many valuable objects avoided appropriation and transportation to Nazi Germany.
In 1943–1944, to shelter collections from bombing, several objects were scattered to nearby towns: Dębowo, Kawęcin, Kiełpin, Luszkówko, Lachowice, Mała Komorza, Morsk, Piotrkówko, Pobórka Mała and Trzciniec. Only a small numbers of the exhibits survived the movement and war chaos. Warfare, robbery and estate devastations resulted in the loss of 58 chests with archaeological relics, five chests from the African collections and an unidentifiable number of militaria, city souvenirs, handicraft products and numismatic items.
Post war period After Bydgoszcz liberation, the city authorities moved the seat of the museum into the 19th century edifice located at 4 Gdańska street, which had harboured until 1937 a 70-bed Municipal Hospital and from 1938 to 1945 the Municipal Department of Social Welfare ().
On 11 April 1946 the City Museum was opened in the new building and named after Leon Wyczółkowski. Kazimierz Borucki, ex-museum custodian, was appointed director of the institution. At the time, the first floor was used as a picture gallery, while city memorabilia and archaeological relics were located in ground floor rooms. In the 1940s, a public call to recover Museum items lost during the war was carried out, which helped to gather back several historic objects disseminated. In 1949, the museum was nationalized and in 1975, was transformed into a District Museum, covering the entire area of the newly created Bydgoszcz Voivodeship.
As time passed, it was necessary to expand Museum capacity with new buildings to fit the growing number of exhibits. Several solutions were considered. One of them was to build a new seat of the museum as part of an ambitious plan, designed by Włodzimierz Padlewski (1903-2007) from Sopot, to rebuild the lost western frontage of the Old Market Square: unfortunately, this project was never implemented. The solution adopted by city authorities lay in using the ancient watermills on Grodzka Street: a comprehensive renovation, ended in July 1964, aimed at suiting the needs of the museum. The buildings were then handed over to the latter in 1975.
In the post-war period, mainly collections grew in quality and quantity, be it historical items related to the past of the city or artistic and guild craftsmanship, numismatic and archaeological collections. In particular, the museum constituted a collection of contemporary Polish art with a significant role on the national cultural landscape.
After 1990, the museum was taken over back by municipal authorities. From 1993 on, several granaries across the town have been used: those on the Brda river welcome exhibitions related to the history of Bydgoszcz, while in the White Granary on Mill Island (), a permanent craft exhibition has been presented. Between 1993 and 2006, a major renovation was carried out upon the granaries in Grodzka street, while the refurbishment of the buildings on Mill Island were covered by the program of Renovation of cultural heritage facilities on Mill Island (2006-2008).
On 9 August 2008 the institution was awarded the Silver Medal "For Merit to Culture Gloria Artis".
On 30 December 2009, by decision of the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage, the District Museum-"Leon Wyczółkowski" in Bydgoszcz was listed on the State Register of Museums ().
Museum departments and branches Development of museum departments By 1958, the museum managed four departments: Polish art, collecting paintings, graphics and sculptures from the 19th and 20th centuries; Leon Wyczółkowski, covering paintings, graphic works and the equipment of the artist's studio and personal mementoes; Archeology, gathering relics from excavations in Bydgoszcz and its region; History, including exhibits related to the city's past, such as artifacts, products of craftsmanship, coins and medals, military items and photographs.
In 1968, the Department of Polish Art was divided into: the Department of Contemporary Art, covering painting, graphics and sculpture by contemporary Polish artists; the Department of Modern Art, which collected Polish and foreign painting, as well as 19th and 20th century graphics and sculpture. The Leon Wyczółkowski section was associated with this department. In 1966, the Numismatics section was detached from the History Department and became a department on its own. The same happened a few years later for the Graphics section, leaving the Art Department. The latter was only constituted by the Ethnography and Music sections.
Other departments and laboratories in the museum were vital to the proper functioning of the institution, inter alia, Familiarizing and Education, Inventory, Conservation, Library and workshops.