Opening hours: Closed Mondays; open all other days, 10am-5pm.
The museum was originally founded as the Regional Museum in Bialystok in 1949, and in 1999 was renamed the Podlaskie Museum. It is the largest museum complex in Podlasie, which has the following branches: the Museum of History and the Alfons Karny Museum of Sculpture in Bialystok; Museum in Tykocin; Museum in Bielsk Podlaski; Museum of Palace Interiors in Choroszcz; the Bialystok Museum of Village Life and its branch in Suprasl.
The main headquarters of the Museum in located in a town hall built in the eighteenth century by the owner of the city at that time, the hetman Jan Klemens Branicki, which was destroyed during the war and then rebuilt in 1958. There are archaeological collections in the town hall, folk crafts from the Bialystok area (both historic and modern-day) and works of art. The art section collects Polish painting from the late eighteenth century to 1918, and owns the only painting in Poland by Michal Bogoria Skotnicki, NEWS OF THE RESURRECTION / WIESC O ZMARTWYCHWSTANIU and works by Jan Matejko, Juliusz Kossak and Wojciech Kossak, Aleksander Gierymski, Jacek Malczewski, Jozef Chelmonski, Stanislaw Wyspianski, Julian Falat, Olga Boznanska and others. The fact that the museum is located in a heavily Orthodox region has meant that its collection of Russian Orthodox icons from the eighteenth to the twentieth century is the most extensive in Poland. It also has thirty priceless fragments from the sixteenth-century wall paintings from the Orthodox church in Suprasl.
Permanent exhibits in the town hall: "Gallery of Polish Painting". Wall paintings are on display in the Suprasl branch of the Podlaskie Museum (ul. Konarskiego 5, 16-030 Suprasl, tel. +48 85 718 35 06); open: 9am-4pm, except Mondays and holidays.
Muzeum Podlaskie w Białymstoku
Rynek Kościuszki 10
15-091 Białystok
Region: podlaskie
Phone: (+48 85) 742 14 73
Phone/Fax: (+48 85) 742 14 40
WWW: www.muzeumpodlaskie.pl
Email: muzeum@muzeum.bialystok.pl