Society of Friends of Fine Arts | The Art Palace

This guide to the Art Palace in Kraków starts with the gilded frieze wrapped around the building, joyful figures on one wall and grieving ones around the corner, an argument in relief by painter Jacek Malczewski about what it costs to be an artist here. It traces the Society of Friends of Fine Arts back to 1854, when a group of citizens set out to nurture homegrown talent in a city then ruled from Vienna, and follows the Society through decades in borrowed rooms before it built this palace of its own in 1899. Among the busts ringing the entrance is Stanisław Wyspiański, whose visionary work the city's own art establishment had long resisted. Look for his face among the carved masters over the door.