Silesian Museum in Katowice

The Silesian Museum in Katowice, in southern Poland, is known in Polish as Muzeum Śląskie. It was founded in 1929 by the Silesian parliament, while the region was still recovering from the Silesian uprisings. Between the wars it already ranked among the largest museums in the country. The Nazi occupation dealt it a heavy blow: the collection was moved to Bytom and the building was destroyed in 1940. After the war the museum was re-established in 1984 on the Grand Hotel campus, and in 2015 a new campus opened on the site once occupied by the Katowice mine, founded by Carl Lazarus Henckel von Donnersmarck, partly incorporating older existing buildings. Its permanent displays cover the history of Upper Silesia, including its German cultural heritage, a sensitive subject under communist rule; Polish art from 1800 to 1945; Polish art after 1945; sacred art; Silesian industry, including its arms production between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; a non-professional art gallery; and spaces devoted to theatre. Among the painters on display are Olga Boznańska, Henryk Rodakowski, Jan Matejko, Józef Chełmoński, Aleksander Gierymski, Jacek Malczewski, Leon Wyczółkowski and Władysław Podkowiński. The website features works such as Killing of Wapowski during the coronation of Henryk Walezy by Matejko and Jewish woman with lemons by Gierymski, along with several paintings by Chełmoński and Boznańska. Part of the collection, lost between 1939 and 1945, was returned in 2015.