26.02 - 03.05.09




Marysia Lewandowska
Lasse Schmidt Hansen
The history of the exhibition "Constructivism in Poland 1973–1994"
curator: Magdalena Ziolkowska

Working Title: Archive is part of an international project Art Always Has Its Consequences. Not accidentally, the exhibition will be presented at a turning point in the history of the Muzeum Sztuki. Several months after the inauguration of the new branch of the Museum (ms2), the reactivation of the building which performed the function of the main venue of the Museum will take place. Moving the collection of art to ms2 in November 2008 was not a gesture of turning from historic roots. Just the opposite: it was an important contribution to analysing the history of the Museum. The exhibition Working Title: Archive is the first project in the history of the Muzeum Sztuki which dwells on a museum archive.

Contemporary culture functions in an archive mode – documenting and recording every aspect of the surrounding reality. At the same time we live in a ‘Net culture’ – giving priority to the inflow of new information, we tend to forget quickly to what extent we have been shaped by the past. One of the places in which the link between the past and the present can be reflected on is a museum archive – considering not only what it contains but also what is lacking: the absence, the gaps, the neglected and the forgotten.

The exhibition Working Title: Archive consists of three parts. Marysia Lewandowska questions the authority of the institution, focusing on its peripheral activity. In her project Loving Museum (Czułe muzeum), an official and a private face of the institution alternate in interviews, films and sound records from the archives of Telewizja Łódź (Lodz Television), Radio Łódź (Lodz Radio) and the Museum itself. The works of Lasse Schmidt Hansen intrigue with his meticulous attention to detail. His activity is rooted in the contemporary drive for documenting and bureaucratization. The third part of the project dwells on Constructivism in Poland 1923-1936 (Konstruktywizm w Polsce 1923-1936), one of the most famous exhibitions in the history of the Muzeum Sztuki, changing Polish constructivism into an inherent part of the western history of art. Since its premiere in Essen in 1973 it was presented in seventeen places in the world.

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Muzeum Sztuki, Lodz, PL
ul. Więckowskiego 36
90-734 Łódź
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