Our Great Ones’. Meeting about Marian Kornecki and the protection of wooden architecture in Malopolska

We kindly invite you to a meeting dedicated to the memory of Dr Marian Kornecki (1924-2001), an outstanding art expert, defender and populariser of wooden architecture. It will take place on 22 April 2024 (Monday) at 6 p.m. in the Karolina Lanckorońska Hall at the Jagiellonian University Institute of Art History (53 Grodzka Street). The meeting will be enriched by the screening of fragments of archival films unknown to a wider audience.

Marian Kornecki – pioneer of wooden architecture protection

It can be said that today’s Małopolska region stands for wooden architecture. Before more than 250 objects from our region were included in the Wooden Architecture Route, and the most precious churches and Orthodox churches of the Polish Carpathians were inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List, generations of researchers and conservators did painstaking grassroots work to spread awareness and save the last surviving gems of wooden architecture. Work, we should add, that demands to be continued, as shown by the dire state and uncertain fate of many examples of such construction, primarily residential, that are still missing from guidebooks.

Marian Kornecki (1924-2001), a lawyer, art historian and tireless promoter of inventory, registration and documentation activities, was one of the pioneers of the protection of the wooden architectural heritage of Malopolska. The protagonist of the second meeting of the “Our Great Ones’ ” ones series left behind thousands of documents, cards, fiches, notes, photographs and sketches. They help to recreate the beauty of a world that was almost lost during the lifetime of just one generation.

Interior of the wooden church of St Bartholomew the Apostle in Krakow’s Mogiła with its unique Rococo polychrome. Photo: Paweł Mazur – bankfoto.info

A historic country cottage in Michałowice near Kraków. Photo: Zygmunt Put / Wikimedia Commons

An example of a wooden spa building in Ojców near Krakow. Especially the secular (residential) wooden architecture of our region still deserves more attention and care. Photo by Anastasia Saldatava / Unsplash

Marian Kornecki – key interests and contributions

A characteristic feature of Kornecki’s activity was his ability to perceive the importance of phenomena that were on the margins of the interest of the world of science and conservation, e.g. the problem of disappearing folk architecture, neglected complexes of 19th century spa architecture, technical relics. The object of his particular interest, pursued with extraordinary dedication and passion for decades, was wooden sacral and folk architecture. Unfortunately, he did not live to see his dream come true – the inscription of the wooden churches of Malopolska on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2003. He devoted a lot of time and effort to preparing this documentation.

Parallel to his work at the Conservation Office and the PP PKZ, he cooperated with the Monuments Inventory Workshop of the Institute of Art of the Polish Academy of Sciences as an inventor and editor (from 1959) of the Catalogue of Art Monuments in Poland. For a dozen or so years he lectured on wooden architecture and construction and conservation at the Department of Ethnography of Slavs at the Jagiellonian University. He was active in the Committee on Architecture and Urban Planning of the Polish Academy of Sciences, and cooperated with the Committee on Theory and History of Art of the Polish Academy of Sciences. He passionately served his home city of Krakow, for example, as the long-standing chairman of the Commission for Programming and Evaluation of Implementation of the Social Committee for Restoration of Krakow Monuments (member of SKOZK since 1990). He was one of the few Polish recipients of the prestigious Hanna Pieńkowska and Jerzy Łomnicki Medal in the field of Polish conservation, and an honorary member of the Association of Conservators of Monuments.

The domes of the Lemko St. Paraskeva Church in Kwiatoń – one of the masterpieces of sacred wooden architecture in Małopolska, listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2013. Photo: Henryk Bielamowicz / Wikimedia Commons

Fragment of wooden building in Lanckorona near Krakow. Photo: Jakub Pabis / Unsplash

Our Great Ones’ series

This is the second meeting in the series “Our Great Ones’ “, following last year’s event dedicated to the memory of Professor Janusz Bogdanowski. The series presents figures of outstanding merit for the protection of historical monuments and the cultural landscape.

The meeting will take place on 22 April 2024 (Monday) at 18.00 in the Prof. Karolina Lanckorońska Hall in the premises of the Institute of Art History of the Jagiellonian University (Collegium Iuridicum, 53 Grodzka Street). A conversation will be conducted in Polish. The following institutions invite for the meeting: The Main Board of the Association of Monument Conservators, the Krakow Branch of the Association of Art Historians and the Department of Culture and National Heritage of the City Hall of Krakow.