Most Polish folk artists are anonymous for us, and their works are familiar only to ethnography specialists or historians. Is it the right way? Can Poland boast any other fascinating representatives of folk art, except for Nikifor? There is a simple answer: yes. The latest temporary exhibition in the Ethnographic Museum  presents unusual figure of folk artist Dorota Lampart.
Dorota Lampart evoked diametrically opposite opinions because both as a private person and as an artist she could not be explicitly defined. She was a loner living with animals in extreme poverty who from time to time transferred herself into the world of visions and dreams turning all that into paintings later on. She was obstreperous, perverse  and terribly wasteful. She was a painter, sculptor, poet; a woman who till the end of her 99-year-long life believed that as an elderly person, just like Saint Elizabeth, she will give birth to twins (according to her mother’s prophecy).
The Ethnographic Museum in Krakow prepared an exhibition which is as unusual and deprived of all the cliché as Dorota Lampart was. There are no conventional solutions and boring presentation of multilateral artist.  Modest, but clever “stage scenery” of the exhibition will impress even those who are not into folk art. In the last room, in the basement of Esterka’s building it is possible to see documentary films concerning the artist’s life. Before we reach this room, however, we can study Dorota Lampart’s “tree of life.” There,  we will see various images of the painter and words expressing diametrically opposite opinions about her. We can also go into her house, where we will find letters scattered all over the place(it is possible to touch and read them). This will help us enter the labyrinth of Lampat’s art and finally reach her “Heaven.”  Most importantly, however,  the arrangement does not overshadow, but highlights the personality of Dorota Lampart -
a “difficult” and confusing person, who, on the other hand, fiercely fought for the right to live and create in her own strange but original way.  
The exhibition is open till 16th May 2010 in Estaerka’s Building of the Ethnographic Museum in 46 Krakowska Street.

Krakow is one of 12 places in the world included in the UNESCO World Heritage List. The architectural complex of the Old Town managed to survive all cataclysms of the past and preserved the same layout since medieval times. The Old Time, as well as the Salt Mine in Wieliczka, are considered one of the most precious architectural treasures in the world.