±∞Zachęta scholarship programme awards ceremony

April 24 witnessed a gala event during which Beata GESSEL-Kalinowska vel Kalisz, Hanna Wróblewska, Dorota Warakomska, and Justyna Markiewicz presented awards to winners of the ±∞Zachęta scholarship programme: Anna Wendzel, Alicja Nawracaj and Gabriela Manista as well as, from the previous edition of the programme, Tomasz Szczepanek and Zofia Czartoryska. 

The ±∞Zachęta programme of the GESSEL Foundation for Zachęta —National Gallery of Art has the mission of supporting individuals who pursue interesting ideas, projects, and concepts in the context of master’s and doctoral studies on modern art and culture theory / history.

In this edition, the Foundation awarded 3 prizes in the competition for the best master’s thesis.

The first prize (and a PLN 5,000 grant) was awarded to Anna Wandzel for her thesis “Because what else can we do ?” Effectiveness of the activist art of Krzysztof Wodiczko, Joanna Rajkowska and Paweł Althamer from an anthropological perspective, honouring the high substantive quality of the work as a whole, extensive use of Zachęta — National Gallery of Art documentary materials, and the author’s faith in the redeeming power of art.

An honourable mention (and a PLN 2,500 grant) was accorded to Alicja Nawracaj for her thesis British print exhibitions at the Society for Encouragement of Fine Arts building in 1900–1914 in recognition of the high level of her basic research and for her treatment of materials from Zachęta’s history which have hereuntil remained unexplored by historians, a commendable effort from the perspective of the ±∞Zachęta programme premises.

A special prize (a one-month internship at GESSEL) was awarded to Gabriela Manista for her thesis Legal aspects of the digital museology phenomenon at the level of national and European regulations.

Upon perusal of the competition submissions, the decision was taken not to award a PhD scholarship in this iteration of the contest in that none of the entries were fully concordant with the framework and substantive premises of our programme.

We thank all the competition participants and take this opportunity to invite entries for upcoming editions of the programme. We welcome master thesis submissions by 30 July 2018, and PhD thesis submissions – by 10 October 2018.

https://zacheta.art.pl/pl/o-nas/fundacja-gessel