ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the exhibitions that were conceived mainly from the essentialist perspective, bringing together artists who were women. The importance of exhibitions of women artists seems to be equally crucial before and after the political transition. The Women’s Art exhibition, organised in 1978 by Natalia Lach-Lachowicz at the experimental Jatki PSP Gallery in Wroclaw, is considered to be the earliest display of feminist art in Poland. In the historiography of gender where the first focus was on femininity, it is important to emphasise that the first major museum and historical art exhibition devoted to women artists in the history of Polish art was organised by the National Museum in Warsaw in 1991, soon after the democratic change of 1989. As gender studies are taught at many Polish universities in the humanities and social sciences, the academics who work in this area find themselves in a difficult situation.
