National Museum, Warsaw. The National Museum in Warsaw, popularly abbreviated as MNW, is a national museum in Warsaw, one of the largest museums in Poland and the largest in the capital. It comprises a rich collection of ancient art, counting about 11,000 pieces, an extensive gallery of Polish painting since the 16th century and a collection of foreign painting including some paintings from Adolf Hitler's private collection, ceded to the Museum by the American authorities in post-war Germany. The museum is also home to numismatic collections, a gallery of applied arts and a department of oriental art, with the largest collection of Chinese art in Poland, comprising some 5,000 objects. The Museum boasts the Faras Gallery with Europe's largest collection of Nubian Christian art and the Gallery of Medieval Art with artefacts from all regions historically associated with Poland, supplemented by selected works created in other regions of Europe. The National Museum in Warsaw was established on 20 May 1862, as the Museum of Fine Arts, Warsaw, and in 1916 renamed National Museum, Warsaw. The collection, on Jerusalem Avenue, is housed in a building designed by Tadeusz Tolwinski, developed between 1927 and 1938. In 1932 an exhibition of decorative art opened in the two earlier erected wings of the building. The new building was inaugurated on 18 June 1938. From 1935 the museum director was Stanislaw Lorentz, who directed an effort to save the most valuable works of art during World War II. During the invasion of Poland the building was damaged and after the Siege of Warsaw the collection was looted by the Gestapo led by Nazi historian Dagobert Frey, who had already prepared a meticulous list of the most valuable artwork on official visits from Germany in 1937. The Gestapo headquarters presented Rembrandt's portrait of Maerten Soolmans as a gift to Hans Frank in occupied Krakow and packed everything else to be shipped to Berlin. After the war the Polish Government, under the supervision of Professor Lorentz, retrieved many of the works seized by the Germans. More than 5,000 artifacts are still missing. Many works of art of, at that time unknown or of uncertain provenance were nationalized by the communist authorities using subsequent decrees and acts from 1945, 1946 and 1958 and were included in the museum collection as so-called abandoned property. At present, the collection of the National Museum in Warsaw includes over 780,000 items displayed in many permanent galleries, including the Professor Kazimierz Michalowski Faras Gallery and galleries given over to ancient art, medieval art, painting, goldsmithing, decorative art and oriental art, as well as many temporary exhibitions. In 2008-2013 the Polish Archaeological Mission Tyritake of National Museum in Warsaw conducted works at Tyritake, Crimea. In 2016 the Polish Archaeological Mission Olbia commenced works at Olbia_, Ukraine. Both are headed by Alfred Twardecki curator of the Ancient Art Gallery. In 2010 the National Museum, as one of the first state institutions in the world, held an exhibition entirely consecrated to homoerotic art-Ars Homo Erotica. Since the 2011-12 renovation, the museum is also considered as one of the most modern in Europe with a computer-led LED lighting allowing to enhance unique qualities of every painting and exhibit. In 1945 the National Museum took over the historic Nieborow Palace in the village of the same name and made them its subsidiaries. In the early perioid, the deputy curator there was the writer Mieczyslaw Smolarski. In 2012 the permanent galleries underwent revolutionary changes. The curators of the museum re-arranged it and supplemented it with new works from the museum's warehouses. Paintings were not hung chronologically, but thematically: genre painting, still lifes, landscapes, cityscapes, biblical, mythological, nudes. Works by Italian, Flemish, Dutch, German and Polish artists were hung together, making it easy to observe and compare similarities and differences. The Gallery of Ancient Art, Faras Gallery, Gallery of Medieval Art, Gallery of Old Masters, Gallery of 19th-century Art and the Gallery of 20th and 21st-century, includes the works of Polish painters and sculptors and are displayed in the context of art in other countries and in different epochs. The galleries reflect the richness and diversity of traditions and historical experiences of individual nations, which, however, built their cultural identity on the same foundation of Greco-Roman antiquity and the Christian religion.