Vincent Polakovič
Vincent Polakovič was born on November 19, 1958 in Poprad. He and his wife Katarína have
a son, Vincent and a daughter Veronika. After graduating from the Faculty of Law of the
Pavol Jozef Šafárik University in Košice in 1982, he began to work in the district attorney’s
office in Poprad. He went on to practice law from 1993 to 1998.
In the summer of 1990, he and his friends traveled in the footsteps of Vincent van Gogh,
visiting all the places where this famous artist lived and created. Inspired by this trip, he built
the now legendary Žltý dom Vincenta van Gogha (Yellow House of Vincent van Gogh) in
Poprad which opened its doors on September 9, 1993. From then until 2000, he organized
several exhibitions of Slovak artists in our country and abroad, mainly in the Netherlands and
Belgium.
In 1994, he met Gerard Meulensteen in the Netherlands, and in 1999, they began
construction of Slovakia’s first private museum of modern art near Bratislava, which was
opened on September 9, 2000. On this day, the activities of the Yellow House Gallery in
Poprad officially ceased and were continued in the new institution, the Danubiana
Meulensteen Art Museum. Vincent Polakovič was its first director and continues to hold this
position. He was awarded the Prize of the Minister of Culture of the Slovak Republic in 2000
in recognition of his implementation of this project.
During his tenure as the Danubiana’s director, he has organized over 300 exhibitions on his
own or with the assistance of art collectors, curators, museums, and domestic and foreign
cultural institutions. To date, the museum has presented the work of over 1,000 domestic
and foreign artists from over forty countries of the world. He is the author and co-author of
over thirty books on fine arts and many art catalogs (Karel Appel, Sam Francis, Ad Snijders,
Zoltán and Madeleine Kemeny, Rudolf Sikora – Ilona Keserü Ilona, Peter Pollág, Miró and
CoBra, Markus Prachensky and others).
At the end of 2011, together with Gerard Meulensteen, they donated the museum to the
Slovak Republic and its artists, and thanks to the financial support of the Slovak government,
they oversaw the construction of a permanent collection pavilion, which was opened on
September 9, 2014. The international jury awarded this addition the 2014 Construction of
the Year award.
In September 2014, Heinz Fischer, the President of the Republic of Austria, awarded
Polakovič the highest Austrian state decoration, the Austrian Cross of Honor for Science and
Art, for his promotion of Austrian art in Slovakia, and in 2017, Zoltán Balog, the Hungarian
Minister of Human Resources, awarded him the Pro Cultura Hungarica award for his work in
culture and in particular for the promotion of Hungarian art in Slovakia.
In its fourteenth year, the Honorary Council of the Július Satinský Bratislava Blueberry
awarded the Danubiana in the category of "Idea - Deed" for its extraordinary contribution to
culture.
On March 11, 2019, Vincent Polakovič, was appointed a Knight of the Order of Orange-
Nassau by His Majesty King Willem-Alexander in recognition of his many years of
extraordinary service to society, the state, and the royal family. Henk Cor van der Kwast,
the Dutch ambassador to Slovakia, presented him with this title on the occasion of the
celebration of 25 years of bilateral relations between Slovakia and the Netherlands. He
became only the fifth Slovak to receive this significant award.
On December 8, 2023, the Tatra Gallery in Poprad awarded him the Prof. Martin Slivka
Award for extraordinary contribution to culture in a national Slovak context.
He was awarded the Kryštálové krídlo (Crystal Wing) for 2024 in the field of fine arts.
In January 2026, the President of the Slovak Republic awarded him the Order of Ľudovít Štúr
2nd class, for exceptional merits in the development of the Slovak Republic in the field of art,
as well as for his exceptional dissemination of the good name of the Slovak Republic abroad.
In addition to managing the museum, he continues to organize exhibitions, acquire works of
art for the museum's permanent collection and publish books about artists.
The exhibitions organized by Vincent Polakovič in Slovakia and abroad (the Netherlands,
Spain, Belgium, Hungary, Syria, etc.) have been seen by more than a million visitors and
admirers of fine arts.
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