A new museum and the impermanent canon. Four takes on the MSN collection

This catalog, marking the inaugural exhibition in the new building of the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, also serves as a book exploring the role and mission of a contemporary art museum today— in Poland and internationally, amidst a turbulent era. The curators of the impermanent: four takes on the collection discuss the show in their curatorial essays, guided by the belief that artworks and their interplay generate new meanings and help us understand the world. The exhibition is structured around the tension between engagement and autonomy, and between popular, life-affirming art and affective art that constructs its own unique universes and languages. Invited eminent scholars, critics, and curators reflect on the very concept of the Museum. prof. Madina Tlostanova explores the potential for decolonizing postsocialism; prof. Krzysztof Pomian revisits the relationship between modern art and democracy; and Laura Raicovich demonstrates, through examples, the role art institutions can play during profound crises. Two conversations complete the volume: one between Claire Bishop, Joanna Mytkowska, and Jakub Gawkowski on radical museology and culture wars (in Poland and in the United States); and between Swiss academics and curators Fredi Fischli and Niels Olsen, and Tomasz Fudala and Natalia Sielewicz, concerning the contemporary mission of museums.