Conducting research and designing

The report was prepared by a team of several members of the Inter-Academy Institute of Conservation and Restoration of Works of Art of the Warsaw Academy of Fine Art and Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków, led by prof. Ireneusz Płuska. The team included, among others, Wrocław art historians – dr Rafał Karlik, prof. Andrzej Kozieł and dr Agnieszka Seidel-Grzesińska, whose task was to prepare a historical study of the decor and furnishings of the Leopoldine Hall. The eight volume-long study consists of over 900 pages of typescript, nearly 300 photographs, hundreds of graphs and micro- and macroscopic photos and 51 boards in 1:50 and 1:25 scale with prints of photoplans (one of them presented above), an inventory of drawings and cross-sections.

The authorities of the University asked for a report with a view to a comprehensive restoration of the Hall, which could no longer be postponed. Therefore, a full conservator’s program was written, which defined the real threats and presented the ways on which they could be removed, including the technology in which the work should be conducted. In the following years the University ordered more plans and expertises, which were needed before the renovation could start. A few years have passed between the compilation of the report and the start of the renovation as the University could not afford to face the challenge of renovating the Leopoldine Hall, which constituted, as is the collective opinion of art conservators’ one of the biggest challenge of the beginning of the 21th century.