URSZULA CZARTORYSKA: A WRITER AND MUSEUM CURATOR

Abstract

In the first period of her career Urszula Czartoryska (1934–1998) dealt mainly with criticism. She predominantly focused on photography and its relations with other artistic phenomena, particularly from the borderline territory where artistic genres meet, covering also film and video. Two books summed up that stage in her writing career: Przygody plastyczne fotografii (1965) and Od pop-artu do sztuki konceptualnej (1973). Czartoryska’s professional domains extended in 1977 when she began work as the Head and Curator of the newly-established Department of Photography and Visual Techniques at the Museum of Art in Lodz, one of the first multimedia departments in world museology (photography, film, video, multimedia installations), forming part of the International Collection of Modern Art (opened to the public in 1931). The work for that institution did not imply only building the Department’s collection, but also involvement in the operations of the whole Museum, its display and publishing activity. It also impacted her writing activity in the sense that it extended to include research studies mainly on multi-motif inter- or interdisciplinary art. Apart from her work as a writer and museum curator, in 1978– 1993, Czartoryska also lectured: at the University of Lodz (1978–1986), Warsaw School of Photography (1985–1993), and at the State College of Fine Arts (today University of Fine Arts) in Poznan (1989–1993). Urszula Czartoryska represented the type of critic, museologist, and researcher opened to multiplicity of relations present in contemporary art, and drawing from numerous methods of its analysis and description.