Presentation of the Aleksander Gieysztor Award to Professor Ewa Chojecka

On 18 March 2026, the presentation ceremony for the Aleksander Gieysztor Award took place at the Royal Castle in Warsaw. The winner of the 27th edition was Professor Ewa Chojecka, an eminent art historian, researcher of Upper Silesian culture and lecturer at the University of Silesia in Katowice. Professor Jacek Purchla once again chaired the award committee. Agata Wąsowska-Pawlik, director of the ICC, also attended the ceremony.  

The Prof. Aleksander Gieysztor Award recognises individuals with outstanding achievements in the field of cultural heritage conservation. This year’s laureate, Prof. Ewa Chojecka, was one of the first to undertake pioneering research into the culture of Upper Silesia and the surrounding areas, focusing on 19th- and 20th-century architecture. This is what Professor Jacek Purchla said about the laureate in the laudatory speech delivered in her honour:

“Professor Ewa Chojecka is today, above all, a world-renowned scholar of exceptional calibre who embodies a modern model of heritage philosophy. Endowed with immense scholarly intuition, she has created research programmes that have re-evaluated views on 19th- and 20th-century art and developed a modern, unbiased method for studying a multicultural region such as Upper Silesia”.

Prof. Chojecka’s academic work

Professor Ewa Chojecka’s academic output comprises over 150 scholarly studies on Central European art and architecture from the 19th to the 21st centuries, as well as numerous books, monographs and articles. Her publications have appeared in both Polish and European specialist journals, as well as in popular science publications. Professor Chojecka is also the author of numerous texts published in books by the ICC Publishing House and in the pages of the magazine “Herito”. 

As a long-standing lecturer at the Jagiellonian and Silesian Universities, the winner of the Aleksander Gieysztor Award has educated successive generations of art historians who are now working in museums and conservation institutions throughout Poland. The award committee recognised the work of Prof. Ewa Chojecka, emphasising that her commitment to the preservation and promotion of cultural heritage can help build a society based on respect and openness, and foster integration between communities with perspectives that are sometimes far apart.

Award recipients and institutions, and the patron of the award

Other recipients of the Prof. Aleksander Gieysztor Award, presented by the Leopold Kronenberg Foundation, have included: Teresa and Andrzej Starmach, the Lviv Art Gallery, Prof. Andrzej Rottermund, Prof. Jerzy Hausner, Leon Tarasewicz, Elżbieta Penderecka and Krzysztof Penderecki, Anda Rottenberg and Prof. Norman Davies. In previous years, Prof. Jacek Purchla was also awarded this prestigious distinction.

The patron of the award, Professor Aleksander Gieysztor, was President of the Polish Academy of Sciences, a member of the Leopold Kronenberg Foundation Council, a distinguished Polish humanist of international renown, a medievalist, and a man of great merit to Polish culture. The award named after him is intended to support individuals and institutions that undertake activities aimed at protecting Polish cultural heritage both at home and abroad.

The International Cultural Centre in Kraków is proud to join in congratulating Prof. Ewa Chojecka, a close friend of the ICC who has been associated with our institution for many years.

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Photo: Jacek Jaworski/courtesy of the Citi Handlowy Foundation.