Last October, Muzeum Sztuki Nowoczesnej w Warszawie (Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw) also known as MSN Warsaw, opened its new home on Plac Defilad in the middle of Warsaw, Poland. The original MSN building opened in 2008 using temporary space in the city, but the modern, new MSN Warsaw, designed by New York City-based Thomas Phifer and Partners, provides 215,000 square feet of space, and is the latest and most significant addition to the Polish capital’s cultural urban landscape

© Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw

In addition to exhibitions of selected works from the MSN Warsaw collection, the museum will present performances, social and educational events, concerts, and lectures. Last October, the opening month of MSN Warsaw in its new building featured several large-scale sculptures and installation pieces by Polish and international women artists, including Magdalena Abakanowicz, Alina Szapocznikow, Sandra Mujinga and Cecilia Vicuña.

“We launched our operations with a show of works by women,” said Joanna Mytkowska, director, MSN Warsaw. “In this way we will continue the global trend of catching up on our understanding of forgotten or ignored women artists, covering up these blank spots with patches of color. Thus, for the museum, this portion of our collection gathered over the past 20 years will serve as a manifesto of support for neglected portions of the art scene and a continuation of the search for missing figures from art history.”

© Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw / Maja Wirkus

“We are showing both historic works, including a large abakan by Magdalena Abakanowicz, as well as works by contemporary female artists of international importance, such as Sandra Mujinga from the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Cecilia Vicuña, the Chilean icon of feminist art,” added Mytkowska.

After the museum opened in its temporary quarters, the Warsaw Under Construction festival examined the context of construction of a new home for MSN Warsaw on Plac Defilad, a popular square in downtown Warsaw called Parade Square in English, located in the city center. Over the following years, museum curators and invited artists entered their works and ideas about a new museum building into a dialogue with Palace of Culture and Science, built during the city’s Communist era, and the history of the space surrounding it.

They debated with urban activists and city authorities over the type of public space to be created around the museum’s new building, and reminded us that after 1989 and the fall of the Soviet Union, the urban life of the Polish capital injected its energy in this location, filling the space of Plac Defilad with bus stations, parking lots, shopping arcades and restaurants.

© Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw / Marta Ejsmont

“It was very important that this new building is located opposite the Palace of Culture and Science and symbolically changes the center,” said Mytkowska. “This is a building dedicated to open, equal and democratic culture.”

On Plac Defilad today, visitors will see the large mass of the museum with a minimalist façade of white concrete, placed between the soaring structure of the Soviet-era Palace of Culture and Domy Centrum, a set of retail structures stretching a length of 1,100 feet. After two decades operating as a nomadic institution, Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw is now permanently embedded in the surrounding cityscape on Plac Defilad, and visitors and locals enjoy MSN Warsaw’s engaging artwork and public spaces.