Search Results - Muzeum Sztuki w Łodzi

Museum of Art, Łódź

Muzeum Sztuki, or the Museum of Art in Łódź, is a museum of modern and contemporary art in Łódź, Poland, whose main goal is to research and display the history of avant-garde art, with a focus on Central and Eastern Europe. Founded in 1931, Muzeum Sztuki became the first museum in Europe and the second museum in the world (after The Museum of Modern Art in New York) dedicated to collecting and showcasing modern art.

The museum opened to the public on 15 February 1931 as the International Collection of Modern Art, organized by several Polish avant-garde artists associated with the a.r. group, including Władysław Strzemiński, Katarzyna Kobro and Henryk Stażewski, among others. The early collection encompassed a diverse range of avant-garde styles such as Cubism, Futurism, Dada, Surrealism, Formism, and Unism. The museum's early years in the 1930s saw expansion under director Marian Minich, enriching the collection with Polish modern art. Following the end of World War II and the imposition of Stalinism in Poland, the museum remained under Minich's directorship and moved to the Poznański family palace in 1948. The same year, the Neoplastic Room, an experimental exhibition space designed to display avant-garde art, was opened at the museum. The institution was nationalized and the museum's name changed to Muzeum Sztuki in 1950.

During the 1950s, in the wake of the Khrushchev Thaw, the museum returned to a more robust international program, collaborating with Western gallerists and artists such as Denise René and Michel Seuphor, among others. This approach developed further under the directorship of Ryszard Stanisławski who led the institution between 1966 and 1990. Notable contributions included a donation of selected works by the German artist Joseph Beuys in 1981 and an artistic exchange with the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles organized in 1982. The museum later acquired the Edward Herbst Palace and planned for new developments in the former Izrael Poznański factory. Currently, the institution consists of three branches: ''ms¹'', ''ms²'' and Herbst Palace Museum (Polish: ''Muzeum Pałac Herbsta''). In 1998 Muzeum Sztuki in Łódź was entered into the Polish National Register of Museums under number 53. Provided by Wikipedia