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Associated Press

A modern art museum has opened in Warsaw, Poland, designed by American architect Thomas Phifer.
The Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw sits like a bright white box on a major city street. Inside, a monumental staircase with geometric lines rises to upper floors, where large windows flood the gallery rooms with light.
The minimalist structure was designed to be a symbol of openness and tolerance as the Polish capital tries to free itself from its communist legacy.
City and museum officials say the light and open spaces are meant to attract meetings and debate – and become a symbol of the democratic era that Poland embraced when it transitioned from authoritarian communist rule 35 years ago.

Warsaw’s mayor, Rafal Trzaskowski, says the museum’s opening is a “historic moment for Warsaw” and that the project, which will later include a theatre, will help create a new city centre no longer dominated by a communist symbol.
“This place will change beyond recognition, it will be a completely new centre,” he says. “There has not been a place like this in Warsaw for decades, a place that would be created from scratch precisely to promote Polish art, which is spectacular in itself.”
Warsaw was turned to rubble by occupying German forces during World War II and was rebuilt in the grey, sometimes drab, style of communist regimes across Eastern Europe.
The museum is what I would call a magic box. There is a bit of mystery to it
Thomas Phifer, The Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw’s architect
But years of economic growth in the post-communist era have resulted in modern glass architecture and cutting-edge museums, and the revitalisation of historic buildings.
The museum was built on the site of a former car park near the Palace of Culture and Science, a dominating Stalinist skyscraper. Although long hated by many who saw in it as a symbol of Moscow’s oppression, the ornate palace remains an icon of the city today – perhaps even the city’s most recognised building.
The museum responds with its bright white minimalism and smaller scale.

“It is very important that this building is located opposite the Palace of Culture and Science and symbolically changes the centre,” museum director Joanna Mytkowska says. “This is a building dedicated to open, equal and democratic culture.”
American and other Western architects are putting their mark on the city.
The Warsaw skyline includes a soaring luxury tower created by Polish-American architect Daniel Libeskind.
The firm of British designer Norman Foster created the Varso Tower, which at 310 metres (1,020 feet) is the tallest skyscraper in the European Union. A Finnish architectural team designed the city’s landmark Jewish history museum.
Phifer’s New York-based practice is known in the United States for projects including the North Carolina Museum of Art, the Corning Museum of Glass and the Glenstone Museum expansion in Potomac, Maryland.

Asked if he viewed the Warsaw museum as his masterpiece, the 71-year-old did not hesitate with his answer. “Of course,” he said.
He says from the time he began working on the museum 10 years ago, he was aware that his work was part of Warsaw’s “remarkable renaissance”.
The city financed the 700,000 million zloty (US$175 million) project. For now it only has a few works of art on display but will eventually hold as many as 2,500 exhibits, including the works of top international artists.

Its full opening is scheduled for February, but the building’s opening programme features weeks of performances and other events.
The area around it is still under construction and it will eventually become what the architect calls a “forum space” including a garden and a theatre with a black facade, also designed by Phifer.
Not everyone loves the new museum’s austerity, and some residents have compared it to a concrete bunker.
Phifer says he believes the critics will feel differently when they enter the building and see its design and how the white background gives space for the art “to come alive”.

“The museum is what I would call a magic box. There is a bit of mystery to it,” he says. “You don’t really understand this work until you come inside and experience it with the art.”
Trzaskowski, the mayor, says ambitious architectural projects are bound to stir up emotions.
“Every large project that has been built from scratch in the world, such as the Pompidou Centre in Paris, the Guggenheim in Bilbao or the pyramid in the Louvre, has stirred up controversy,” he says, and adds that the real controversies are yet to come, when the avant-garde museum starts staging exhibitions.


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Architecture and design

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The interior of the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw. Photo: AP

The newly opened Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw is part of the Polish capital’s efforts to move away from its communist past and into a new era of “open, equal and democratic culture”. Photo: AP

The Museum of Modern Art was built on a former car park near the Palace of Culture and Science – a symbol of Stalinism that is arguably the most famous building in the Polish capital. Photo: AP

American architect Thomas Phifer, the designer of Warsaw’s new modern art museum. Photo: AP

People look out of windows at the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw. Photo: AP

An art installation inside the museum. Phifer says critics of his building will feel differently once they enter the building and see how it makes art “come alive”. Photo: AP

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Lifestyle

Arts

Open and full of light, the new modern art museum is part of Warsaw’s post-communist renaissance. Its architect, Thomas Phifer, explains


Open and full of light, the new modern art museum is part of Warsaw’s post-communist renaissance. Its architect, Thomas Phifer, explains.


European Union

Poland