DIRECTOR ZOFIA GOŁUBIEW (1942–2022)

The tribute to Director Zofia Gołubiew (1942–2022) covers mainly the period when she ran the National Museum in Cracow in 2000–2015. Having begun her career at the Jagiellonian University, where in 1972 she graduated in art history, two years later she accepted the proposal to work at Cracow’s National Museum (MNK), and this is how she started her relationship with the oldest Polish public museum which became her professional destination and ‘shared home’ at which she continued working uninterruptedly for 41 years, until she retired on 31 December 2015. She began as a publishing house editor (1974–1980), to subsequently run the Department of Polish Modern Painting and Sculpture (1980–1996); subsequently, she served as Deputy Academic and Educational Director (1996–2000), to finally become the Director of the National Museum in Cracow in 2000 (2000 –2015) as recommended by Director Tadeusz Chruścicki retiring in 2000. The eighth Director of the institution, she was the first woman to hold the position in more than 140-year’s history of MNK. The 15 years under her as MNK’s Director constituted a dynamic period of the institution’s development. It was the time span encompassing numerous renovations and modernizations, organizational changes, and the introduction of innovatory solutions which have become contemporary standards in Polish museology. The list of her professional accomplishments is long and impressive, although there have still remained some projects and dreams she was unable to accomplish. The latter, however, does not question the fact that the final result of Zofia Gołubiew’s directorship was the consolidation of MNK’s brand, confirming the truth entailed in the thesis that MNK is the most important and most modern of the Polish museums, easily recognizable both domestically, and abroad.