Cabinet of Miniatures

The Cabinet of Miniatures opened as a permanent exhibition on 9 May 2001, bringing works previously held in museum storage into public view. The collection contains more than two hundred miniatures, figurines and reliefs.

Its core was assembled over a lifetime by Leon Dietz d'Arm, an architect from Zabrze. The museum purchased his collection in 1969 and added almost 100 objects, representing more than three centuries of miniature art from Poland and abroad. Works include a portrait of a man in a beret by Aleksander Orłowski (1777-1832) and sketches made by Jan Ksawery Kaniewski (1805-1867) during holiday travels in Ukraine. Small reliefs and silhouettes accompany the miniature portraits in the display cases, showing different forms of this small-scale art.