The exhibition ‘Arcadia’ is on display at the National Museum in Warsaw until 17 March 2024. The museum presents works of art from the early Renaissance to the present day including paintings, sculptures, drawings and engravings, photographs, as well as outstanding examples of artistic craftsmanship (tapestries, ceramics, costumes).

The ‘Arcadia’ exhibition presents a variety of interpretations of a theme that has become a permanent fixture in European culture. The myth of Arcadia, derived from, among others, Virgil’s ‘Bucolics’, is an image of an ideal world in which there is unchanging order, and its inhabitants experience blissful happiness, eternal youth, freedom and free eroticism.

Since modern times, Arcadian motifs have recurred again and again in the work of artists depicting the beautiful land of shepherds and shepherdesses, nymphs, and satyrs. They also allude to these contents metaphorically, expressing man’s longing for happiness in various ways. The Arcadia topos is expressed in paintings of court gardens, landed estates, exotic lands, or picturesque regions, where a harmonious relationship with nature can be felt.

The exhibition presents primarily objects from the collections of the National Museum, but also paintings from other Polish collections (including the Museum of the Royal Łazienki, the Wawel Royal Castle, the National Museum in Kraków, the National Museum in Poznań) and foreign museums (including the French Musée du Louvre, the Musée d’Orsay in Paris, and the Austrian Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien).

For visitors, it is an opportunity to meet the great names of European painting, such as Claude Lorrain, François Boucher, Jean-Baptiste Pater, Camille Corot, Henryk Siemiradzki, Zofia Stryjeńska, Arnold Böcklin, Pierre Bonnard, Józef Mehoffer and Jacek Malczewski. The exhibition also features contemporary artists: Mirosław Bałka, Jarosław Kozakiewicz, Diana Lelonek, Cecylia Malik, Agnieszka Piksa, Karol Radziszewski, and Anna Siekierska.

Arkadiusz Słomczyński