The first Minister of the current Tusk Government to resign turned out to be Bartłomiej SienkiewiczHead of the Ministry of Culture. The politician is to draw lists of KOs in the European elections in the territory of Małopolska and Świętokrzyskie voivodships.
For part of the public, this decision will prove the instrumental treatment of culture and its management by politicians. For others, the abandonment of the post during the war inactive far from the final ending – in this way even the most faithful fans of the Civic Platform reacted to the decisions to take off ministers from KO in the Euro-elections.
It can besides be considered that Sienkiewicz did what belonged to him. He entered the ministry with a circumstantial intent – to break up unhealthy arrangements built by erstwhile authority in culture and the task did so. His resignation closes a phase of cleaning up after the Law and Justice in culture and opens a truly hard question: “What next”?
What am I grateful to Sienkiewicz for?
However, let us return for a minute to Sienkiewicz himself. Although he was possibly the shortest minister of culture in the III Republic, he will be remembered for a long time, especially by the cultural-intellectual base of the right.
Piotr Gliński He's utilized us to a figure that's highly polarizing, which is simply a constant controversy for the head of the department. He was never, however, the most polarizing figure of government in which he sat – he had Ziobrów, Czarnków, Kaczyński. Sienkiewicz, meanwhile, alongside Adam Bodnar and Donald Tusk, became the most controversial figure of the power camp, focusing on the biggest hatred of his opponents.
I confess: I am grateful to Sienkiewicz for playing a hard and ungrateful role. individual had to do it, individual had to take on the function of a “tran”, breaking up the old and clearing field for the new. individual must have cut through Gordian knots in TVP, Incentive, the Dmowski Institute and another institutions acting in a way that a serious state could not tolerate and collect the expected hate.
Sienkiewicz may have enjoyed this function besides much. any measures, They weren't very elegant.. They surely stirred the political conflict in Poland – especially what happened around TVP. Minister Sienkiewicz's methods can be questioned, but if the second step were to place what was happening on TVP until December last year, doubts begin to weaken.
What is most crucial, there was no 1 willing to do it better, cleaner, more elegant and equally effective.
It wasn't a blind purgatory.
Also important, Sienkiewicz's actions were not made blindly clean, from a purely organization key. The Ministry was active in exchanging staff in institutions where there truly were strong reasons for this.
Encouragement was a disaster even on the basis of its conservative assumptions, it did not have even the most controversial achievements that it could boast about – like the Ujazdowski Castle. manager Janusz Janowski did not fulfil, as the ministry stated, the programme commitments concerning the promotion of Polish art abroad.
The Dmowski Institute should never be established in this form: as a state-funded institution serving to advance only 1 – endecimal – political tradition and to build bridges between the Law and the extreme, national right. Most frequently with the aid of public money, which goes to people like Bąkiewicz.
Reports about this, these were to take place at the Institute of Literature, they present a image of an institution requiring liquidation or a complete reset. About TVP in a model set by Jack Kurski and only somewhat modified by Matthew Matyszkowicz in general it is simply a pity to write.
The staff decisions that Sienkiewicz has made so far were besides rather sensible. Prof. Rafał Wnuk as a p.o. manager of the Museum of the Second planet War in Gdańsk, Olga Wysock at the head of the Adam Mickiewicz Institute, bringing people specified as Hanna Wróblewski to Zachęta – these are all decisions that inspire assurance in the cultural environment. The minister besides listened to the environmental arguments of filmmakers about royalties for recreating the effects of their work online.
It's only the beginning
However, Sienkiewicz never presented a coherent thought of the cultural policy of the fresh government. This deficiency of an thought for a fresh beginning is already coming to light.
Perhaps the most painful in public media, which have lost an old “written” audience, but were incapable to get a fresh 1 and inactive do not have a good idea, distinguishing them from competition – whether from TVN or Channel Zero. Sometimes 1 can get the impression that the thought of a fresh squad on culture is to "be normal", that is, as before 2015. Even assuming, at least, that by 2015, everything was working as it should, it changed besides much in Poland to be able to make television, culture, museums, advance Polish art abroad in the same way as then.
A lot of bad things can be said about PiS's cultural policy, but it must be given to the ruling organization in 2015-23 that the culture took seriously and had a reasonably coherent concept. It can be summarised in the shortest possible formula: the state generously supports culture, but alternatively requires it to implement certain metapolitical content.
The fresh government during Sienkiewicz's word of office in little than half a year did not make its imagination of the state's relations with culture. What function will the state counsel take? How much should he share his money by his values?
These questions have a very applicable dimension, which shows the case of the Dmowski Institute. It is to be converted into an institute researching the whole, not only national, Polish political tradition, but besides to monitor threats from the far right. The acting manager was Adam Leszczyński. However, there have besides been doubts in historians about whether this kind of institute is needed, whether the means needed to keep it are not better passed on to academic institutions dealing with akin research, based on a more technological autonomy than the institute subordinate to the MKiDN.
In cultural institutions we have a number of competitions to choice fresh authorities. Sienkiewicz left the hotel before we truly had a discussion about what we expected after the fresh beginning in specified places as Zachęta and the Polish movie Institute. There's something to discuss. The act on cinematography was passed inactive during the regulation of the SLD, so from the point of view of any young generation behind the Elbow. At a time erstwhile the movie manufacture operated in completely different conditions – no 1 dreamed, for example, of streaming platforms.
There is besides a law on the position of the artist to cover artists with social and wellness insurance, which for years could not "bring" the erstwhile management of the resort.
It can't be what it was like.
Sienkiewicz's successor or successor will have quite a few work to do. Who should be in charge of the resort? surely individual who brings much little political heat and controversy into his buildings, who will be able to propose a fresh opening. alternatively of cleaning up after the Law and Justice, propose a fresh debate on what culture we want and, as we see, the function of the state in supporting it – capable of including at least any conservative environments.
Unfortunately, specified a discussion seriously – this is an chance to translate its effects into practice – can only offer individual with a strong political position. The minister or minister of culture must so be able to appeal for his ministry in the power camp. At the same time, 1 needs individual able to go beyond the organization logic and who – crucially – understands that it cannot be as it was. Before Tusk, a hard staff assignment.
