Piotr Piotrowski. Photo: PAPThe director of the National Museum in Warsaw, Piotr Piotrowski, has submitted his resignation after failed efforts to change the development strategy and artistic programme of the establishment.
Piotrowski informed the museum staff of his decision during a seven-minute long meeting, saying that his move follows a rejection by the Board of Trustees of his development strategy for the museum for the next ten years.
In his letter of resignation, Piotrowski writes that the Board of Trustees, which is headed by Jack Lohman, the director of the Museum of London, had not earlier voiced any reservation as to his concepts of the artistic programme and structural changes in the National Museum, which has not undergone any modernisation since 1989.
Piotr Piotrowski took up the post of Director in the spring of 2009. He soon came into conflict with the staff. His plans to lend Jan Matejko’s painting The Battle of Grunwald to museums in Berlin and Kraków were met with a protest by the Museum’s chief art conservator.
Piotrowski set up an independent commission which was to give an opinion on the matter, after which he announced his intention to dismiss the conservator for ‘activities harmful to the management’.
Last August, 95 percent of the members of staff wrote a letter to the director protesting against his management methods and policies. Piotrowski was one of the initiators of the recent controversial exhibition ‘Ars Homo Erotica’. (mk/jb)
Source: IAR