The Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw has opened its doors in a striking new building designed by Thomas Phifer. The museum’s inaugural exhibition, “The Impermanent,” features 150 works from its collection that reflect a range of themes. These themes include gay, women’s, and immigrant’s rights, as well as issues that resonate with Polish conservatives, such as the legacies of Communism and the Holocaust.
The museum’s director, Joanna Mytkowska, said she aims to cater to a broad audience and avoid overt political leanings. “When we set out to build MSN Warsaw’s permanent home after the institution spent its first two decades as a roving museum, ‘The Impermanent’ was precisely the kind of ambitious exhibition we wanted to present,” Mytkowska said. The museum’s new home spans 4,544 square meters and includes exhibition halls, a theater, conservation studios, and a public forum.
Opening of the Warsaw museum
The building’s design responds to the surrounding architectural context, with a cast-in-place white concrete facade crafted by local artisans. The exhibition is organized into four thematic sections that explore the role of art in political, cultural, and spiritual debates.
These sections include “Banner: Engagement, Realism, and Political Art,” “Synthetic Materialities: Body, Commodity, and Fetish from the Cold War to the Present,” “Dark Planet: Art, Spirituality, and Future Coexistence,” and “Real Abstractions: The Autonomy of Art Against the Catastrophes of Modernity.”
The museum’s collection includes over 4,300 works spanning visual arts, graphic and industrial design, architecture, performance, and multimedia. Notable artists in the collection include Magdalena Abakanowicz, Alina Szapocznikow, Monika Sosnowska, Cecilia Vicuña, and Thomas Hirschhorn. The exhibition “The Impermanent: Four Takes on the Collection” will run until October 5, 2025.
The museum aspires to bridge Poland’s polarized cultural landscape by representing a diverse array of voices and perspectives while avoiding overt political leanings.