Warsaw Museum of Modern Art gets a permanent home

The Warsaw Museum of Modern Art (MSN Warsaw) yesterday unveiled plans for the opening of its new headquarters (as well as its first permanent home), located in the city center on the historic Plac Defilad (Parade Square). Designed by Thomas Phifer and Partners, the building will open in two phases, in October 2024 and February 2025. A three-week cultural festival with more than 100 public events will begin on October 25, 2024, offering a preview of the activities and exhibitions the museum will offer its public. During this first phase, MSN Warsaw galleries will present large-scale sculptures and installations by Polish and international women artists, whose work will be presented in dialogue with the new building. In February 2025, the museum will open its fully equipped galleries with the first comprehensive exhibition drawing from its collection of more than 1,000 works of Polish and international art from the 21st and late 20th century. In the new building, the entire ground floor of the museum will always be open to the public free of charge during opening hours.

The 213,000-square-foot concrete structure, the first building designed by Thomas Phifer and Partners and built in Europe, is, as anticipated, MSN Warsaw’s first permanent home since its founding in 2005. Founded as an art-focused collecting institution created since 1989, MSN Warsaw has hosted dozens of exhibitions in temporary spaces in Warsaw and throughout Poland. It will now have a dedicated space of about 48,911 square feet for long-term and temporary exhibitions, as well as a 150-seat theater, state-of-the-art conservation studios, a performance auditorium, educational spaces, and a bookstore and café on the ground floor.

Joanna Mytkowska, director of MSN Warsaw, said, “This project, which has been in the works for 20 years, offers the Polish capital its first permanent home for international contemporary art. Founded as a traveling institution committed to the art of our time, MSN Warsaw now takes on a new role as a center for conversations that enliven contemporary art of all kinds. We are immensely proud to take this important step with a building that is worthy of the extraordinary collection we have assembled and furthers our efforts to serve as a civic institution with a global reach.”

Thomas Phifer, founder of Thomas Phifer and Partners, says, “Our mission with this project was simultaneously to recognize the legacy of Parade Square, to create a new model of architecture for the historic city of Warsaw, and to design a space that can meet the complex needs of art since 1989 as well as those of contemporary Varsavians. Envisioned as a showcase of light, the building is a museum and a new town hall where citizens can join together as active participants in the ongoing cultural renaissance in Warsaw.”

Since founding Thomas Phifer and Partners in 1997, Thomas Phifer has completed projects such as expansions of the Glenstone Museum in Potomac, Maryland, the Corning Museum of Glass in Corning, New York, and the North Carolina Museum of Art in Raleigh, North Carolina, as well as the United States Courthouse in Salt Lake City, Utah, and the Brochstein Pavilion in Houston, Texas. Thomas Phifer has received the Rome Prize in Architecture from the American Academy in Rome, the Medal of Honor and President’s Award from the New York Chapter of the AIA, the Arts and Letters Award in Architecture, and the National Design Award in Architectural Design from the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum. In 2022, he was elected a life member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

To celebrate the building’s completion, the museum will offer an ambitious series of public performances, lectures, concerts, family programs, film screenings, and other events taking place Oct. 25 through mid-November, highlighted by a newly commissioned video work by Agnieszka Polska that will be projected on the museum’s facade.

The construction of MSN Warsaw is funded by the City of Warsaw. The general contractor is Warbud S.A., and the building is designed by New York architectural firm Thomas Phifer and Partners in collaboration with APA Wojciechowski sp. z o.o. Buro Happold of Warsaw provided the engineering. The architectural concrete facade was developed and designed by Skidmore Owings and Merrill of London. A consortium of Ecm Group Polska sp. z o.o. and Portico Project Management sp. z o.o. is serving as contract engineer for the project. The museum’s legal adviser for the development is KKLW Kurzyński Łyszyk Wierzbicki Sp.k.

The building

The opening of MSN Warsaw marks a new era for Plac Defilad, a gathering place for Warsaw residents since the 1950s. Framed by the Soviet-era Palace of Culture and Science on one side and a gallery of stores and shopping centers on the other, the museum building is the centerpiece of the square’s revitalization and serves as a hub for new arts and ideas in the nation’s capital. In contrast to the verticality of the Palace of Culture and Science, the MSN Warsaw building is horizontally organized and composed of two rectangular shapes. Its distinctive façade, composed of cast-in-place white concrete, handcrafted by local artisans, expresses the ethos of the institution and is intended to provide an enduring and timeless presence.

The facade is punctuated by the building’s horizontal ribbon of windows that provides light to the second-floor galleries. A continuous portico serves as a transitional space between the city and the museum, setting the stage for the experience within.

A monumental, classically inspired double-symmetrical staircase at the heart of the museum is flooded with natural light to provide a space for social interaction. The openness of the ground floor creates a central meeting point and offers expansive views of the city and through the museum. The central space also organizes the entrances to the main series of interconnected galleries on the upper two floors. Each series of galleries on the two main exhibition levels features “city rooms” with windows clad in European ash that offer places for pause and reflection and framed views of the city of Warsaw. The fixed galleries, from 4 to 7.5 meters high, each have different sizes and proportions. A system of shutters and veils modulates natural light and activates the galleries throughout the day. The roof, called the building’s “fifth façade,” provides diffuse and continuous natural light into the galleries. The galleries will have elegant but durable grit floors. Finally, the ground-level exterior will be lined with newly planted acacia trees that will gently enclose the complex.

The Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw (MSN Warsaw)

Founded in 2005, the Museum of Modern Art Warsaw (MSN Warsaw) is a public institution dedicated to the collection, presentation, and interpretation of international art made since 1989. With broad interests in visual arts, graphic art, industrial design, architecture, performance and multimedia art, the Museum houses more than 1,000 works acquired over the past two decades.

Included in the collection are works by international artists such as Cecilia Vicuña, Thomas Hirschhorn, and Wolfgang Tillmans, and Polish artists such as Magdalena Abakanowicz, Alina Szapocznikow, and Monika Sosnowska. MSN Warsaw also collects objects of visual culture, including neon signs, posters, and post-internet art, and holds archives of important postwar Polish art institutions such as the Foksal Gallery and the Polish Radio Experimental Studio. It also preserves more than 1,000 avant-garde films.

Warsaw Museum of Modern Art gets a permanent home

Warning: the translation into English of the original Italian article was created using automatic tools. We undertake to review all articles, but we do not guarantee the total absence of inaccuracies in the translation due to the program. You can find the original by clicking on the ITA button. If you find any mistake,please contact us.