‘Thursdays at the Outer Bailey’ – report on the inauguration

‘Thursdays at the Outer Bailey’ – inauguration of a new series of castle cultural meetings

As announced, the new spaces of the reconstructed ancillary buildings of the Outer Bailey have become a place for activities of a completely new cultural and educational offer. ‘Thursdays at the Outer Bailey’ is a series of monthly meetings devoted to castle events, publications, personalities, projects and simply stories with Malbork castle in the background.

The first meeting focused on the topic of the Castle Museum’s Losses Project, dealing with lost works of art. Thanks to funding from the ‘Research into Polish War Losses’ programme of the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage, the Museum has been conducting a thriving research into the history of the collection and the items making up the collection since 2018.

At today’s meeting, members of the Project’s research team talked about the activities, challenges and the idea behind their efforts to study the castle’s war losses. As a result of careful analysis of a number of sources, they are slowly putting the pieces of various disciplines together. Over these few years, it has been possible to establish the origin and authorship of many works, to locate lost monuments, to help other museums establish the origin of their ‘anonymous’ works, and to return several lost works to the place of their origin.

The specifics of this laborious work, its results and successes and, above all, the enthusiasm of the castle scientists, led to a thunderous applause at the end of this two-hour meeting. It was definitely a nice addition to the frequently occurring sense of satisfaction with the small and great successes that come with this challenging task.

We were happy to share free copies of the Project’s beautifully produced publications with you that day.

Thank you for attending. We look forward to seeing you at future Thursday meetings.