Hanna Benesz graduated from the Institutes:
of Art History and of Applied Linguistics at the University
of Warsaw. Her whole career launched in 1975 remained
inseparably connected with the National Museum in
Warsaw, where she worked at the Gallery of European
Art curating the Flemish and Dutch collections. She
followed all the promotion steps: from assistant to curator.
Benesz strongly believed that museum curator’s job was
grounded in a perfect knowledge of the collection. Thanks
to her research conducted into the paintings amassed in
National Museum’s storerooms, she successfully attributed
a substantial number of works and identified provenance of
many. She studied iconography applying research methods
worked out by iconology. Moreover, she focused on the
paintings’ technical condition, this occasionally leading to
spectacular ‘restorations’, e.g. the identification of a genuine
work by Abraham Janssens (ca 1575–1632) the Lamentation
of Christ in a forgotten work, previously considered to be
a copy. Author and co-author of many exhibitions, she
cooperated with museum curators around the world. Her
exhibition on Baroque art reached as far as Japan. Benesz’s
intention was not only to present the paintings from the
National Museum’s collections through a direct contact of
visitors with the works, but also in publications, mainly in
English and online. As soon as she became curator, together
with Maria Kluk she focused on working out the reasoned
catalogue Early Netherlandish, Dutch, Flemish and Belgian
Paintings 1494–1983 in the Collections of the National
Museum in Warsaw and the Palace at Nieborów. Complete
Illustrated Summary Catalogue, published in 2016. A year
later, the Catalogue was honoured with the main prize in the
Sybilla Competition in the category for publications, while
the King of the Netherlands awarded Hanna Benesz with
the chivalric Order of Orange-Nassau (Oranje-Nassau) of the
5th grade; she was decorated with it by the Ambassador of
the Kingdom of the Netherlands during the 20th CODART
Congress held at the Warsaw Łazienki Palace.
Not only was Hanna Benesz an outstanding museum curator
and scholar, but also a trusted friend and a warm empathetic
person, sensitive to other people’s misfortunes.
In Memoriam Marietta Messmer
