THE EXHIBITION of baroque art from Poland at the Walters Art Gallery is a major artistic, cultural, diplomatic and political event.

Some 35 Polish museums lent 150 works for the exhibit that coincides with Poland's admission into the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). East meets West; in Poland, it always did.

The exhibition, "Land of the Winged Horsemen, Art in Poland, 1572-1764," goes on to four museums in this country and then to Warsaw in the summer of 2000. This is its East Coast venue. Scholars from Boston, connoisseurs from New York, strategists from Washington and Polish-Americans from Pittsburgh who need to view it will come to town.

While here, many will dine. Some will stay in Baltimore hotels, as suggested in the Walters' newspaper advertisements. Probably more would if the Baltimore cultural region had marketing tools similar to those Greater Philadelphia has developed recently.

The Mount Vernon Cultural District and Baltimore Community Foundation heard Wednesday from the Greater Philadelphia Tourism Marketing Corp. and the Avenue of the Arts. Both groups get public money -- the first to promote tourism , the second to guide the growth of performing arts that are transforming Broad Street, the Charles Street of Philadelphia, into its Avenue of the Arts.

If a Philadelphia museum were putting on this Polish exhibition, the Greater Philadelphia Tourism Marketing Corp. would place ads for the show, listing hotels offering deals to museum-goers. Whether the museum were in the city or a suburb, the corporation would boost it. In exchange, the museum would promote neighboring institutions. The corporation, launched with grants from the Pew Charitable Trusts and city and state governments, is fed by revenue from the hotel tax.

Were such a mechanism in play here, more people who come to see Polish art would dine afterward on Charles Street, take in a concert or play, spend the night in a hotel and go on the next day to the American Visionary Art Museum or Baltimore Museum of Art. The Mount Vernon Cultural District is a good start, but more should be done.

Meanwhile, the Walters exhibition will open American eyes to the remarkable culture of the Polish Commonwealth that was celebrated as Europe's greatest state for two centuries, before disappearing at the end of the 18th century, not to re-emerge until 1918. The Walters deserves credit for bringing it before American eyes.

In ancient Greek mythology, horses had wings. In Polish cavalry charges, the wings were on the riders or, sometimes, the saddles. People who want to see them are mobile, too.