Muzeum Sztuki in Łódź

Museum of Art in Łódź

Muzeum Sztuki
Former Maurycy Poznański's Palace
Location within the city of Łódź
Established	1930 (1930)
Type	Art museum
Collection size	Modern art, Contemporary art, Avant-garde art
Director	Jarosław Suchan
Website	msl.org.pl

Muzeum Sztuki, or the Museum of Art in Łódź is a museum of modern and contemporary art in Łódź, whose main goal is to research and display avant-garde art, as well as progressive artistic interventions.

The institution is housed in three branches: MS1, MS2 and Herbst Palace Museum [Polish: Muzeum Pałac Herbsta]. Established in 1930, it is one of the oldest existing and active museums to collect avant-garde art. In 1998 Muzeum Sztuki in Łódź was entered into the Polish National Register of Museums under number 53.

Muzeum Sztuki in Łódź is primarily focused on studying and displaying the collection of 20th and 21st century art in a variety of contexts, as well as on providing progressive artistic interventions and enhancing the role of art as element of social life, e.g., through educational activities.

Its programme coincides with avant-garde project worked out at the turn of the 1920s and 1930s by the “a.r.” group or, more precisely, by Władysław Strzemiński, Katarzyna Kobro and Henryk Stażewski) and with the idea developed by Ryszard Stanisławski (Muzeum’s director in the years 1966–1992) of a “museum as a critical instrument”. These ideas are further expanded in the assumption, according to which a museum is capable of re-defining and updating notions pertaining to art and culture and establishing social relations with the involvement of art. Through exhibition, research, educational and publishing programme, the Muzeum strives to practice the idea of art as a way to experience, feel and understand the reality, which was a part of avant-garde dream of creative life available to all.

Muzeum Sztuki was established as a result of reorganisation of Łódź museums in 1930. The core of its collection is based on works of modern art collected in Poland and abroad by “a.r.” group in the period 1929–1932 and supplemented until 1938. The initiator and the main driving force behind the action of collecting the donations from artists was a painter and art theoretician Władysław Strzemiński, actively supported by Katarzyna Kobro – a sculptor, Henryk Stażewski – painter, as well as Jan Brzękowski and Julian Przyboś – poets.