2015 Jan Karski & Pola Nirenska Prize at YIVO Awarded to Jerzy Malinowski

The Award Committee of the Jan Karski and Pola Nirenska Award is pleased to announce that Prof. Jerzy Malinowski has been named the recipient of this year's prize. Endowed by Prof. Jan Karski at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research in 1992, the $5,000 prize goes to authors of published works documenting Polish-Jewish relations and Jewish contributions to Polish culture. The winner was chosen by the Award Committee whose members are Prof. Pawel Spiewak (Director, Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw), Dr. Jonathan Brent (Executive Director, YIVO Institute for Jewish Research), Prof. Szymon Rudnicki, Dr. Joanna Nalewajko-Kulikov, and Dr. Joachim Russek. The award ceremony will be held in September at the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw.

Prof. Jerzy Malinowski, a distinguished art historian—currently of the Nicolaus Copernicus University in Torun, Poland where he heads the Department of Contemporary Art—has had a distinguished career in Polish academic and art institutions over the last forty years as a teacher, administrator, prolific author, and creator of art exhibitions. A specialist in art and art criticism of the 19th and 20th centuries, especially in the 20th century avant-garde, Jerzy Malinowski took great interest in Jewish artistic groups that were formed by the expatriate Jewish artists from Poland in Paris and Berlin, as well as artistic circles in Poland such as the group Jung Jidysz in Lodz. In 1987 he published a study on this group (in Polish) titled "The Group Jung Jidysz and the Jewish Circle of the 'New Art' In Poland, 1918-1923" (Warsaw, 1987). This book was followed by the remarkable history (in Polish) titled "Painting and Sculpture of the Polish Jews in the 19th and 20th Century" (Warsaw, 2000), and its sequel, "In the Sphere of the Ecole de Paris. Jewish Artist from Poland" (2007), a two-volume study on Jewish artists from Poland who had formed artistic colonies in Paris. In these and many other articles, studies, exhibition catalogs, and essays, Prof. Malinowski succeeded in bringing into light the greater part of the Jewish artistic milieu that derived from the Polish homeland and left its mark far and wide both in Poland and outside of the country. Over the course of his career, Jerzy Malinowski has helped create an impressive body of important literature on the subject of Jewish art and Jewish artistic creativity which originated from within Polish Jewry.