HISTORY

Biuletyn Historii Sztuki is the oldest Polish academic journal dedicated to art history, published since 1932 (with a break in the years 1940–1945). The journal was founded by Oskar Sosnowski as Biuletyn Historii Sztuki i Kultury – a quarterly of the Department of Polish Architecture at the Warsaw University of Technology. Among those associated with the Department and the editors of Biuletyn Historii Sztuki i Kultury were Witold Kieszkowski, Stanisław Lorentz, Juliusz Starzyński, Jerzy Szablowski, Michał Walicki, Jan Zachwatowicz and Stanisław Herbst. After the Second World War, it was reactivated as a journal of the newly established State Institute of Art History and Inventory of Monuments and the Department of Polish Architecture and Art History at the Warsaw University of Technology. For the first four years (1946–1949) it was a continuation of the pre-war Biuletyn Historii Sztuki i Kultury. The breakthrough date in the history of the Biuletyn Historii Sztuki was 1949, when the State Institute of Art History and Inventory of Monuments was transformed into the State Institute of Art, an interdisciplinary scientific institution which in 1959 transformed again, this time into the Institute of Art of the Polish Academy of Sciences. Biuletyn Historii Sztuki i Kultury became a quarterly of this Institute and the Association of Art Historians (until 2020), published from 1950 under the shortened title that is still in use today. Juliusz Starzyński became chairman of the editorial committee and Jan Białostocki became editorial secretary. In 1951, the position of chairman of the editorial committee was abolished and replaced by editor-in-chief. The first editor-in-chief was Stanisław Lorentz, holding this position until 1981. The next editors-in-chief of the Biuletyn Historii Sztuki were Stanisław Mossakowski (1982–1988), Jerzy Kowalczyk (1988–1996), Piotr Paszkiewicz (1996–2002) and again Stanisław Mossakowski (2002–2023), who since 2024 has been the honorary editor, while the editor-in-chief is Joanna Stacewicz-Podlipska.

The 1932–1949 editions contained scholarly articles on the history of art and architecture, as well as on museology, inventory and reconstruction of monuments. After 1950, the profile of the journal was limited to texts relating exclusively to the history of visual arts and architecture, as well as the history of art theory and art criticism from the Middle Ages to the present. Individual issues of the journal usually contain texts on various topics. However, there are issues dedicated to the art of a single historical period or region (Silesian art, 1962, no. 3–4; Russian art, 1998, no. 1–2; Swedish art, 2003, no. 3–4), selected artistic phenomena (Polish-French artistic relations, 1958, no. 2; Saxon architecture in Poland, 1967, no. 3), methodological issues (the concept of style, 1978, no. 1; hermeneutics in art-based research, 2023, no. 4) or the work of individuals (Rembrandt, 1956 no. 3; Józef Chełmoński, 2014, no. 4).

The largest group of authors publishing in the Biuletyn Historii Sztuki are researchers from Poland. However, the journal welcomes texts from scholars representing the international community of art historians, and has published texts by researchers from Great Britain, the United States, Italy, France, Sweden, the Netherlands, Germany and Turkey, as well as Czechoslovakia, Lithuania, Russia, Slovenia and Ukraine.