„O płytkiej rzece i tolerancji”,

z Bożeną Steinborn, w jej warszawskim mieszkaniu na Stegnach, rozmawia Anna Markowska

Abstract

Bożena Steinborn (in her Warsaw’s apartment) talks to Anna Markowska on a shallow river and tolerance

Dr Bożena Steinborn is an eminent art historian and museologist, a now-retired curator of the National Museum in Wrocław (formerly the Silesian Museum) and vice-director of the institution in the years 1979–1983. After that date she returned to her native Warsaw. She worked in Wrocław for thirty pioneering years, after graduation from the University of Warsaw in 1952. In an interview with Anna Markowska, she talks about her professional activities from 1953, when she settled in the Lower Silesia. During that time her attention was focused on organizing the painting department, many temporal and touring shows and lectures, creating the collection, working on archive documents, preparing scholarly papers. She recalls i.a. the process of creation of the Gallery of European Painting in the museum, which opened in 1973. An important element of the conversation is her work with Lower Silesian monuments. It is thanks to art and monuments of material culture that the city, “this foreign, ruined land”, for many a place of temporary stay, became for Bożena Steinborn a new home, and “the most important” – as she says – place in the world. In her story she also reveals her family background, as well as events and people who had the strongest influence on her professional attitude.