The final project for the Museum building is here!

On the 17th of June 2010 the architect Christian Kerez presented the final version of the Museum building, including the newly added functions, such as the TR Warszawa theatre hall and full theatre backstage.

According to the updated timeline, the construction is due to begin in the summer of 2012. The opening of the Museum and the Theatre common building is planned for 2015.

„I SEE THINGS THAT ARE NOT THERE"
25.05 – 6.09.2010

Polish Institute in Rome
Via Vittoria Colonna 1

artists: Wojciech Bąkowski, Tania Bruguera, Oskar Dawicki, Aneta Grzeszykowska, Sanja Iveković , Deimantas Narkevičius, Agnieszka Polska, Katerina Šedá, Piotr Uklański

With the help of institutional structures such as museums we learn to remember and to fix historical canons, but we also improve in the art of oblivion. The objects as well as their accompanying narratives find a place inside or beyond history and are mixed with the help of defensive displays, rotation between the showroom and the warehouse, and the strength of involvement in mechanisms of legitimization of power and prestige. The exhibition I SEE THINGS THAT ARE NOT THERE is a short story about museums and their compulsive and also capricious need of collecting objects - a feature that distinguishes these institutions as a building tool for writing and drawing on both history and art history.

The works in this show refer to the process of distortion of the most popular historical narratives of today and the methods of reporting individual biographies. The artists, who are aware of the strategies adopted in museums, make a manipulation of language and memory. In doing so, they anticipate what and how should be remembered, either in the case of the obligatory rhetoric of the "chosen people" (Uklański) or in private mythologies (Bąkowski, whose work - considered a monument dedicated to a conversation between the artist and a friend - gives the title to the entire show).

The exhibition mainly consists of works from the Museum’s collection. The Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw is one of the youngest art institutions in Europe (established in 2005) which has already developed an intensive program of exhibitions, although it does not have its own permanent building yet. The Museum, among other activities, contributes actively to the production of new works referring to its local environment and political and social transformations taking part in rewriting the recent history of art, in which forgotten or misunderstood artists from Central and Eastern Europe find a place within the international art history canon. The opening of the exhibition I SEE THINGS THAT ARE NOT THERE at the Polish Institute in Rome offers visitors a taste of high-level institutional strategies and, not surprisingly, it coincides with the Roman opening of MAXXI - National Museum of XXI Century Arts. At the same time this show is an "addendum" to the international debate on the future and mission of public museums.