WARSAW.- 2025 will be a year of numerous exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw—including an extensive presentation of the museum’s own collection. Traditionally, and in line with the institution’s mission, the exhibitions will be accompanied by many other events: tours, lectures, performances, workshops, and educational exercises for children, young people and adults, as well as screenings at Kinomuzeum complementing the exhibitions. The doors of the first-floor galleries will open to the public on 10 January 2025, when the museum will once again host the Refugees Welcome exhibition. See you soon at MSN Warsaw!
This stunning large-format book transcends the typical photo album, offering a captivating visual narrative of the construction of the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw designed by Thomas Phifer.
The new home of the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, opened on 25 October 2024, has already been visited by over 300,000 people. Following the intense period of inaugural events greeting the new building at ul. Marszałkowska 103, MSN Warsaw has begun preparations for long-planned exhibitions, including large ones occupying the entire upper-floor galleries, and smaller shows in the free-of-charge Gallery A on the ground floor.
“We have been looking forward to 2025 for many years,” said MSN Warsaw director Joanna Mytkowska. “The two gallery floors, the already-famous staircase, and the ground floor, which is always accessible to all, are opening up entirely new possibilities for the whole museum team. This is a historic change for MSN Warsaw, which has been in operation for twenty years, enabling us to intensify our work and offer audiences a much richer, mutually complementary and interpenetrating program of exhibitions and accompanying events, from meetings in the auditorium to guided tours and the in-house cinema Kinomuzeum. The scale of its operations is greatly expanded, but MSN Warsaw remains true to itself as a place giving voice to artists, an open, educational place, commenting and advocating for others.”
EXHIBITION OF THE COLLECTION
Impermanent Exhibition: Four Takes on the Collection opens to the public on 21 February. It will be the first presentation on this scale of MSN Warsaw’s own collections, which the museum has been building for nearly two decades, and will be supplemented by significant artworks from the collections of other institutions and private individuals. The museum’s collection comprises works and documents testifying to the changes that have occurred in the visual arts over the last seven decades in Poland and around the world. The collected works express the diversity of media and artistic approaches, and capture the dynamism of artists’ involvement in social life, the circulation of information, and the growth of new technologies. The MSN Warsaw collection also includes artistic archives and the MSN Warsaw Filmoteka—a collection of hundreds of films.
The exhibition will be composed of four parts, prepared by the curatorial team and helping viewers engage with the works via recognizable terms from art history, such as pop art, socialist realism, and abstract art. The proposal of several perspectives will also be an open invitation for audiences to seek their own paths for understanding the collection. As MSN Warsaw director Joanna Mytkowska says, “Artworks and the dialogue between them and the outside world continually open the field for creation of new meanings, helping us describe the world we live in.”
The journey through the exhibition will begin with a collection of works involving political engagement and dreams of building a better world through art. The second part includes works arising from a fascination with popular culture, advertising and design, seducing the heart and the eye. The next chapter is art grounded in uncompromising imagination, drawing from numerous traditions: folk, amateur and indigenous art, artistic practices flourishing away from major art centers and their rules. The last part will return to the question of the boundaries of art, its autonomy from other systems of knowledge and cultural production, particularly in the context of the disintegration and destruction of the world as we know it.
In the Impermanent Exhibition, audiences will experience over 130 works created between the 1950s and the present. The works from the MSN Warsaw collection will be shown in the galleries on the 1st and 2nd upper floors of the museum. An exhibition providing an overview of the collection as it existed at that time was held at MSN Warsaw in 2013. Impermanent Exhibition: Four Takes on the Collection will be open to visitors for over half of the year. The team preparing the exhibition includes Sebastian Cichocki, Tomasz Fudala, Magda Lipska, Szymon Maliborski, Łukasz Ronduda and Natalia Sielewicz.
THE ART OF WOMEN
The exhibition calendar for 2025 will close with a project with the working title Women in the Square. It will be an extensive, cross-sectional presentation of art by women, filling the entire first floor of the museum building. The aim of the show, apart from presenting the richness and diversity of work by women artists, is to release the power inherent in a new approach to art history which demands justice, giving a voice to the “invisible,” and re-examining the so-called canon. The exhibition will feature the most recent works, as well as paintings by Renaissance, Baroque, and 19th-century female artists. This project will comprise numerous independent voices, the rich mosaic of perspectives of women’s creative activity: from activism to art history, examining the specific language of forms created by women artists. The exhibition will challenge the accepted view that prior to the 20th century women artists were rare exceptions. It shows that despite often being devalued, and acting in defiance of various social prohibitions, women faithfully pursued their creative mission, using artistic acts to confirm their presence and validate their unique life experience.
The largest part of the show, devoted to art by women from the 16th century to the present, is being prepared by the distinguished curator and art historian Alison Gingeras, who is familiar to MSN Warsaw audiences at the very least thanks to the hugely popular exhibition of Aleksandra Waliszewska, The Dark Arts. The project will also include independent capsule exhibitions prepared by researchers and curators Julia Bryan-Wilson, Michalina Sablik and Vera Zalutskaya, Karolina Gembara, and Wiktoria Szczupacka.
KYIV BIENNIAL
One of the exhibitions in the 6th Kyiv Biennial will also open this autumn in the new MSN Warsaw building. Due to the war in Ukraine, the biennial is being conducted not only in Kyiv but also in the form of guest presentations elsewhere in Europe. The upcoming edition is being prepared by a curatorial consortium of members of L’Internationale, a confederation of European museums and art organizations of which MSN Warsaw is a member. This edition will be devoted to reflections on the ongoing wars and atrocities committed by the imperialisms, colonialisms and fascisms of today in Ukraine and the Middle East. The MSN Warsaw galleries will feature works from post-Soviet countries, devoted to the artistic and social avant-garde, whose creators exploit the visionary power of art to change reality. The show will also attempt a reckoning with the past, including the notion created in the West of the “Russian avant-garde,” re-assigning this notion to a multi-ethnic and multicultural avant-garde. The audience will witness splendid examples of this avant-garde borrowed from Kyiv museums, including the famed “platinum collection” from the Mystetskyi Arsenal National Art and Culture Museum Complex.
THE GROUND FLOOR OF THE MUSEUM AND THE OPEN GALLERY A
The first temporary exhibition by the artistic and research group Zakole, with curator Jakub Depczyński, will open on Friday, 7 February, in Gallery A on the museum’s ground floor. For several years the group has explored, documented and spread information about the Wawer Bend (Zakole Wawerskie), a wetland near the center of Warsaw, comprising a picturesque but mostly inaccessible swamp and extensive meadows. The artworks and documentary and research materials gathered for the exhibition will reveal to audiences new ways of describing and experiencing this difficult but fascinating site within Warsaw. The show will touch on issues such as the climate crisis, adaptation to climate change by urban agglomerations, non-human inhabitants of cities, and the types of knowledge that art can generate and convey.
The presentation of the Zakole group will be the first exhibition in the gallery space on the ground floor, which is open free of charge and will be dedicated to practices of collectives and grassroots initiatives. 2025 will also witness there a presentation of the Kraków-based initiative Skład Solny, which has functioned as an independent cultural and artistic collective since the 1990s. During their exhibition, artists, craftspeople, activists and researchers affiliated with the group will present artworks and documentation of the first few decades of activity in this special place.
In the spring and summer, Gallery A will show the next edition of the artistic and educational program Primary Forms, titled The Museum as a School. It will have the distinction of being the first edition to begin and end in the new MSN Warsaw building as a performative exhibition. It will be made up of works by children based on artistic projects in the form of instructions to be executed. The exhibition will also include works from earlier editions of Primary Forms, the fruits of workshops with the audience, and works from the MSN Warsaw collection chosen by children.
The Primary Forms program is prepared by the curatorial team of Helena Czernecka and Sebastian Cichocki, in conjunction with the EFC Foundation. In 2024 it was presented at the 3rd Thailand Biennale. The same year, the program won second prize in the Creative Processes category in the Warsaw Cultural Education Prizes and was nominated for the Outstanding Museum Practice Award of CIMAM, a global network of modern and contemporary art museum experts.
An exhibition titled Republic of Cynics will be shown between 16 May and 8 June on the ground floor of the museum. It will be the next chapter in a program prepared along with the Vienna-based Kontakt Collection—the first having been held during the MSN Warsaw opening in October 2024. The exhibition will include several parts, first and foremost performative actions intended for the museum staircase, where works will be presented by such artists as Anna Daučíková, Cezary Bodzianowski, Teresa Murak and Katalin Ladik. At Kinomuzeum there will be screenings of films selected from the Kontakt Collection and the MSN Warsaw Filmoteka, presenting the history of experimental and countercultural aspects of performance art in the 1960s, the 1970s, and following the post-communist transformation. In the exhibition spaces, performances based on historical and contemporary instructions and scores will be shown in relation to works from the MSN Warsaw collection. The creator of the presentation at MSN Warsaw is the independent curator and writer Pierre Bal-Blanc. The Kontakt Collection, founded over 20 years ago, focuses on art in Central, Eastern, and Southeastern Europe.
MUSEUM GROUND FLOOR: PUBLIC PROGRAM, EDUCATION, PUBLISHING AND CINEMA
Along with its exhibitions, the museum is traditionally planning to carry out over 3,000 accompanying events, in both its public program and its educational program. This will include projects carried out in the new building and sites familiar to Varsovians for many years, at the Hansen House in Szumin and the Bródno Sculpture Park. Each week MSN Warsaw will invite participants to the museum building for more tours and workshops. A family program will be conducted, as well as events accompanying specific exhibitions, and programs in conjunction with communities affiliated with the museum or based on recommendations from the museum’s Public Program Social Council.
In 2024, over 16,000 people took advantage of the museum’s educational offerings, including nearly 7,000 pupils from preschools, elementary schools, and secondary schools. Programs designed for schools, families, youth, adults, and disabled people attracted participants of all ages, underlining the major role of education in the museum’s operations. New educational features in 2025 will include architectural workshops, where participants will explore the secrets of architecture as an art form, and active tours—interactive encounters with works from the collection. Another major event will be the launch of an educational book for children starring artworks from the MSN Warsaw collection, inviting youngsters into an inspiring journey through the world of art.
The M Store has operated on the ground floor of the museum since the opening day of the new building, where visitors can purchase books published by the museum, among other items. In 2025 these works will include catalogues accompanying the main exhibitions as well as additional themed publications. The plans include the first children’s book from the MSN Warsaw publishing house, mentioned above, as well as Non-Human Agents of Urban Transformation: Artistic Projects and Transfigurations of Urban Spaces by Joanna Erbel, presenting well-known artworks that have become part of the Warsaw landscape, and Cosmos, a book-length interview between curator Anda Rottenberg and artist Mirosław Bałka.
The museum’s exhibitions will be accompanied by the film program at Kinomuzeum. At this new location on the map of Warsaw cinemas, independent and experimental films will share the screen with some of the most interesting mainstream movies. Audiences can view European art house pictures, genre films, films by artists, documentaries and animated films. Numerous meetings with filmmakers are planned for 2025, as well as interviews about film art with experts in film theory and practice. The cinema program will include the museum’s own extensive film collections, archives, and collections of particular artists. Kinomuzeum will continue MSN Warsaw’s existing long-term cooperation with film festivals and artistic collectives, while also establishing new collaborations.
A special event in 2025 at the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw will be a festival carried out in cooperation with the Wapping Project. As part of UK/Poland Season 2025, organized by the British Council, the Adam Mickiewicz Institute and the Polish Cultural Institute in London, MSN Warsaw and the British platform the Wapping Project are preparing a series of events devoted to the relationships between art and sound. The culmination of the program is planned for 26–29 June, and will feature women artists from Poland and the UK working with sound and combining it with other media. Musical interventions, concerts, broadcasts, film screenings, and sound sculptures will allow audiences to explore the MSN Warsaw building and the exhibitions of the museum’s collection from an unusual perspective. The participants will include such artists as Elaine Mitchener, Barbara Kinga Majewska, Chu-Li Shewring, Aleksandra Słyż, Una Lee and Antonina Nowacka.
REFUGEES WELCOME: THE FIRST EXHIBITION IN 2025
Meanwhile, on Friday, 10 January 2025, the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw and the Friends of MSN Warsaw will host for the 8th time the exhibition Refugees Welcome: Artists for Refugees and Migrants. The exhibition presents works donated for the charity auction to be held on 19 January. The exhibition and auction are gestures of solidarity through which the artistic community aids individuals who have had to flee their home country. The exhibition, curated by Jagna Lewandowska, will include works by artists such as Jan Dobkowski, Dominika Kowynia, Jarosław Fliciński, Mariola Przyjemska and Joanna Piotrowska. In what has become a tradition, the proceeds will be earmarked for two programs effectively pursued by the Ocalenie Foundation for years: Refugees Welcome Poland and the Help Center for Foreigners. Thanks to the generosity of artists and bidders, in the last year alone the Ocalenie Foundation assisted 15,000 people who have followed a long and difficult path.
The new building of the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw is accessible to all. The ground floor, open and free of charge, where the bookstore, Gallery A and the auditorium function, is the site for realization of the public program—encounters integrating diverse initiatives, cultural institutions, NGOs and creative communities. It is a space that the museum shares with Warsaw residents every day. MSN Warsaw is continuing its actions to make art accessible to individuals with various needs, among other things conducting workshops and tours with translations into Polish Sign Language for the hearing-impaired, using typhlographics and audio descriptions for the vision-impaired, and, as the museum has done for years, offering “quiet hours” on Tuesdays for those on the autism spectrum. Visitors can enter the museum with a guide dog.
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