Sibyl 2009
Two Sybil nominations for the Regional Museum in Stalowa Wola.
During this year’s 30th edition of the ministerial competition for the Museum Event of the Year – Sibylla, the Regional Museum in Stalowa Wola was nominated for two awards, thus finding itself among the 26 best Polish museums. The gala took place on May 17 at the National Museum in Warsaw, the awards were presented by Minister Bogdan Zdrojewski.
The competition for the Sibyl Museum Event of the Year, organized by the Minister of Culture and National Heritage, is the most prestigious rivalry in Polish museology. The Stalowa Wola Museum has repeatedly won prizes and awards at it.
-This year the competition rules have changed slightly. There were not, as before, three awards and even several honorable mentions in each of the ten categories, but at most four nominations, and of these nominated entries the jury awarded only one in a given category,” says Director Lucyna Mizera. – The competition received 213 entries. Of these, 34 were nominated, and only 8 were awarded prizes. In two categories, the jury did not award prizes at all. The competition committee deliberated under the chairmanship of Professor Jan Skuratowicz of the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań.
The Regional Museum in Stalowa Wola received a nomination in the “Art Exhibitions” category for its “Natural Resources of Polish Design” exhibition, as well as a nomination in the “Educational, Educational and Promotional Programs” for its “Accessible Museum – Integrated Educational Program for the Disabled.”
This is the fifth time the Stalowa Wola Museum has been recognized by an independent competition jury. So far it has won two first prizes, three second prizes, one third prize and two honorable mentions (in the 2002, 2006, 2007, 2008 editions of Sybil), now this balance has been enriched by two nominations.
The most laurels this year went to four Warsaw museums, with a total of three awards and three nominations. Fewer awards but more nominations went to Wroclaw – 2 and 5, respectively, out of three museums honored. The remaining awards went to Poznan, Gdansk and Opole. Meanwhile, among the nominees were museums from Krakow, Lodz, Katowice, Kielce, Zakopane, Malbork, Radzionków, Lednica, Bydgoszcz, Kazimierz Dolny, Szreniawa and Rzeszow.
Some establishments received several nominations each – the National Museum in Wroclaw received the most, with three; two nominations went to five more establishments, in addition to the Regional Museum in Stalowa Wola. In this way, the group of winners narrowed to 26 museums.
“NATURAL RESOURCES OF POLISH DESIGN” is a presentation of the influence of folk motifs and techniques on contemporary Polish design, decorative arts and architecture. It is an attempt to synthesize, summarize and gather in one time and place works inspired by folk arts and crafts – form, matter, technical solutions or finally poetics. The exhibition turned out to be an important event and widely commented on in the pages of the domestic media, both those dealing with art and popular opinion magazines and women’s monthlies. Such a wide echo of the exhibition proves that the topic of folk and regional influences on art is a mature phenomenon that deserves to be summarized.
The interest of Polish establishments promoting Polish culture and art abroad and the exhibition’s repeated invitation to participate in international festivals confirm this impression. It also proves that contemporary Polish design, firmly rooted in Polish heritage and cultural diversity, is attractive to the sophisticated European viewer.
The exhibition has been presented in Stalowa Wola, Brussels, London and Krakow, and is currently on view in Belfast, and will visit Berlin in June. And the events in which the exhibitions took part: the London Design Festival and Design September or Poland! Year, as well as those at which they are to be presented, are serious, reputable regular events.
Idea of the exhibition: Lucyna Mizera
Commissioners: Agnieszka Jacobson-Cielecka, Paweł Grobelny, Anna Szlazak
Scenario: Agnieszka Jacobson-Cielecka
