The beginnings of the "Cracow School of Art History" from Jerzy Malinowski (ed.), History of Art History in Central, Eastern and South-Eastern Europe (2012)

• Main Author: Stefan Muthesius
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Department of Art History, University of Birmingham 2012-12-01
• Series: Journal of Art Historiography
• Subjects: Later 19th century period; art history of Poland; empiricism; institutionalism
• Online Access: http://arthistoriography.files.wordpress.com/2012/12/muthesius-cracow.pdf

Because Polish art history, that is, art history written by Polish scholars, has tended to be rather inward-looking as a whole, its first and most important school, that of Cracow, has not received the attention it deserves. The term ‘school’ is here used in a way akin to that of ‘Vienna School’. Cracow modern art history originated in the 1860s to 1880s in the small but culturally extremely vigorous capital of Austrian Poland, as a co-operation between the newly-founded art history section at the Academy of Sciences and the Department at the Jagiellonian University. It pursued two principal, interlinked aims: the investigation of Polish art and architecture and the use of new methods that were being developed in Western and Central Europe. What comes across most strongly is the constantly foregrounded ethos of scientific, empirical exactitude and the intense institutional togetherness. All are united in an absolute devotedness to their academic task. One of the results was the way in which recruitment has remained within the school until this day. It has to be remembered though that other Polish centres only started teaching the history of art after WW I. This article is a- preliminary attempt to characterise, firstly, some of the chief factors of institutionality and, secondly, some methodological aspects of the work of the two chief protagonists, Władysław Łuszczkiewicz and Marian Sokołowski.