Muzeum Narodowe w Gdańsku, Gdańsk

At the Green Gate, you meet the National Museum in Gdańsk’s branch devoted to exhibitions; since nineteen ninety-nine, it has presented displays without maintaining a collection of its own. This venue belongs to an institution created in nineteen forty-eight, now the largest cultural organisation in Pomerania. Its recovery began amid devastation: during nineteen forty-five, about eight hundred objects recovered from Gdańsk’s ruins were brought into a building damaged by roughly sixty-five percent.

The objects were protected and conserved as exhibition space was reclaimed. The museum opened on the thirtieth of May nineteen forty-eight, then took the name Pomeranian Museum that July. In nineteen fifty-six, artworks removed during the war returned from the Soviet Union, including Hans Memling’s Last Judgment, the museum’s most valuable work.

On the seventh of May nineteen seventy-two, the Pomeranian Museum became the National Museum. Here at the Green Gate, that long institutional story continues through exhibitions rather than permanent holdings.