Museums and Centers of Contemporary Art in Central Europe after 1989

Katarzyna Jagodzińska

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• eBook ISBN: 9781351372091
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Art
• Subtopic: Museum Studies

Museums and Centers of Contemporary Art in Central Europe is a comprehensive study of the ecosystem of art museums and centers in the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia. Focusing on institutions founded after 1989, the book analyses a thirty-year boom in art exhibition space in these regions, as well as a range of socio-political influences and curatorial debates that had a significant impact upon their development.

Tracing the inspiration for the increase in art institutions and the models upon which these new spaces were based, Jagodzi?ska offers a unique insight into the history of museums in Central Europe. Providing analysis of a range of issues, including private and public patronage, architecture, and changing visions of national museums of art, the book situates these newly-founded institutions within their historical, political and museological contexts. Considering whether - and in what ways - they can be said to have a shared regional identity that is distinct from institutions elsewhere, this valuable contribution paints a picture of the region in its entirety from the perspective of new institutions of art.

Offering the first comprehensive study on the topic, Museums and Centers of Contemporary Art in Central Europe should be of great interest to academics, researchers and postgraduate students engaged in the study of museums, art, history and architecture.

1
The ecology of art museums before and after the 1989 political transition

An overview

The Central European museum boom that started toward the end of the 1990s belongs to the global phenomenon that had been underway since the 1970s and 1980s. The difference, however, is that in this part of Europe, museums abruptly became an essential part of the cultural landscape and urban panorama. After 1989, a new type of museum arose: the museum of contemporary art. Quite frequently, centers for contemporary art emerged independently from museums, both the Kunsthalle type and autonomous collections. Cities rode the wave of new plans and investments, but disputes also erupted among political dissidents, investors, architects, and cultured communities. A portion of those proposals awaits completion.

The aim of the following chapter is to delineate the institutional background of museums and centers for art created after the political transformation of 1989. A number of these institutions demonstrate the rich museum tradition of the region; but at the same time, they show the dearth of institutions dedicated to the newest art, which in the 1990s was particularly visible. The chapter also serves to document and contextualize the proceeding chapters of the book. I begin with the twentieth-century traditions; here the institutions are presented across place and in chronological order, commencing with Poland where they appeared with the greatest frequency (as a consequence of the country’s considerable size and population), and followed by examples in Hungary, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia. I then treat the development of institutions that arose (or that acquired new buildings, thanks to which their activity gained momentum) after the transformations of 1989. This enumeration shows the extraordinary number of investments that had been undertaken in the Central European territories in a relatively short period of time – just under twenty-five years beginning from the opening of the first contemporary art museums in the Czech Republic (1995) and Hungary (1996), through the establishment of a museum of contemporary art in Gdańsk (2017). In the final section, I discuss the context of art institutions after 1989 as well as mention the most important functional challenges and problems.

Twentieth-century tradition

New museums and centers of art emerging since the 1990s did not arise from within a vacuum. From a statistical point of view, the assessment of those institutions engaged with modern and contemporary art in the individual Central European countries before 1989 is not the worst, although these are almost exclusively institutions established for the collection and presentation of art in general; twentieth-century art represents only one area of interest. There were just a few specialized institutions: the Muzeum Sztuki in Łódź (which in addition to twentieth-century art also houses works from earlier periods), Zachęta Gallery in Warsaw, and Műcsarnok in Budapest. Also worthy of mention is a network of galleries that emerged across Poland during the 1950s and 1960s, whose goal was to collect and exhibit contemporary art. In addition, regional art museums in Czechoslovakia focused predominantly on the twentieth century. Not only specialist institutions dedicated to the newest works of art, but all museums covering twentieth-century art of different periods provide the context for the emergence of institutions of modern and contemporary art.

The longest-standing tradition among the institutions engaged with contemporary art in the partitioned Polish lands is the Society of the Friends of Fine Arts, established in 1854 in Krakow; analogous in form was the Society for the Encouragement of Fine Arts in Warsaw, which from 1860 became one of the most important institutions of art in Poland. This latter institution played a key role in mounting exhibitions during both the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, as well as after 1989. In its first period of activity, Zachęta occupied a rented space, but since 1900 has been located in a Neo-Renaissance building on Małachowski Square in Warsaw according to a project by Stefan Szyller. The Society’s activity ceased in 1939, when it was converted to the “House of German Culture” (its holdings were spared by their transport to the National Museum, a portion of which entered into its permanent collections).

After the war, the Society was not reinstated. Initially, the headquarters of the General Directorate of Museums and Monuments Protection was located in the building, and from 1951 it contained the Central Bureau of Art Exhibitions (Centralne Biuro Wystaw Artystycznych – CBWA) established two years earlier. Its goal was the popularization of art and the organization of artistic life throughout the country. An administrative network was created to serve this purpose. In 1949, offices were established in Katowice, Krakow, Poznań, and Bydgoszcz; Łódź, the delegation of the Krakow branch in Zakopane, Gdańsk, Szczecin, and Wrocław in 1951; in 1958, Olsztyn and Opole. The CBWA was involved in planning and organizing exhibitions both in Warsaw and for the individual branch offices. It also controlled the entire exhibition activity in the country. Over the space of forty years, the CBWA organized many significant, individual exhibitions of the most important Polish and foreign artists (Mansfeld 2003). It also created a collection with “politically correct” works purchased from exhibitions and competitions, but from the 1970s, art was acquired for educational purposes, giving rise to a professional collection (Stepnowska 2003: 205). In 1962, eleven branches of the CBWA were transformed into the Bureaus of Art Exhibitions (Biura Wystaw Artystycznych – BWA) and subordinated to the provincial authorities. From 1975, when the new administrative division of the country took effect, there were forty-one; together the delegations and branches they numbered forty-nine, to correspond with the number of provinces. The CBWA did not formally supervise the offices, which functioned independently, but on the principle of unwritten law, close cooperation continued as the CBWA still coordinated the major exhibitions according to a “tradition of established authority” (Meschnik 2001: 16). The quality of exhibitions organized by the BWA was uneven; the galleries staged valuable exhibitions, but many extra-artistic considerations decisively impacted the organization, whose offices functioned as a support structure for the local art scene regardless of artistic merit. Officially, the CBWA functioned until 1994. At that time, the statute of the institution was changed, establishing the Zachęta State Gallery of Art (from 2003, the Zachęta National Gallery of Art). The liquidation of the CBWA, however, did not entail the liquidation of individual BWAs, many of which decided to continue operations under the existing name.

The creation of the Muzeum Sztuki (Museum of Art, see Atlas 3.10) in Łódź marked an unprecedented event in Central Europe (see Turowski 1998; Ojrzyńki 1991, 2004; Jurkiewicz-Eckert 2006). This is the oldest museum in the region focused on modern and contemporary art, having been the only independent museum of its kind in the region until the creation in 1996 of the Ludwig Museum in Budapest. Its initiator was the internationally respected avant-garde artist Władysław Strzemiński, who on 15 February 1931 officially handed over a collection of international modern art comprised of Polish and foreign artists’ gifts to the Department of Education and Culture of the City of Łódź. Two rooms opened a year earlier in the Łódź City Hall as the Museum of Urban History and Art, named after Julian and Kazimierz Bartoszewicz, became the place for the presentation of the collections.

While still living in Soviet Russia, Strzemiński observed the development of museums of artistic culture (operating from 1919–1922) that combined the features of art research institutes and museums with extensive didactic ambitions. After arriving in Poland, the idea of creating a museum that would present not only the works of Polish artists, but also those of artists from broader Europe, matured in his mind. He never left for Western Europe, but his work and theoretical writings were well known thanks to exhibitions and the art press. In Paris, Henryk Stażewski and the poet Jan Brzękowski, as well as the painter and art critic Michel Seuphor, co-created the collection through their acquaintances and friendships in the art world. In sum, forty-four artists – including thirty-three from the Parisian milieu – initiated International Modern Art Collection, but there were no works by artists from Russia and Central Europe, except Poland. During the Second World War, the collection was designated as Degenerate Art by the Nazis. 24 pieces out of 111 were stolen and destroyed. After the war, Strzemiński, together with his wife Katarzyna Kobro, donated most of their surviving work to the museum. In 1946, the museum received a new seat from the city in the former palace of Maurycy Poznański at Więckowskiego Street in Łódź. The opening of the permanent exhibition in the new building took place in 1948, and presented art from the Middle Ages through international modern art. There, the famous Strzemiński Neoplastic Room was established. In 1950, the museum was taken over by the state and renamed the Muzeum Sztuki in Łódź. Also that year, the display was closed for its incompatibility with the principles of socialist realism, and the Neoplastic Room was destroyed. Modern art slowly returned to the museum rooms in 1956, but the new permanent display was not opened until 1960.

The creation of the Muzeum Sztuki in Łódź did not eliminate the plans for the establishment of a museum in Poland devoted exclusively to contemporary work. In 1966, Jerzy Ludwiński, the initiator of the most radical concept for such a museum, announced the program of the Museum of Recent Art in Wrocław. The museum he proposed would act as a “constantly changing open system” that would “react to artistic facts at the time of their creation;” it would “provoke artistic facts” in which “a new art would be born”. Ludwiński also described the formal issues of such an institution: not too large, and no excessive financial outlays, where “the existence of a collection should not be the most important thing” (Ludwiński 2008: 21). Following this concept, the “museum” staged two exhibitions in 1967 (Ludwiński 2008: 4).

The encyclopedic museums – national, regional, and municipal – are important to collecting and disseminating twentieth-century art, although Marcin Szeląg noted (2005: 34) that these museums “treated [it] incidentally, and accumulated it more through the implementation of specific state policy towards living artists and socialist propaganda, rather than by the real conviction that there was space for it in museums”. In 1985, the Ujazdowski Castle Center for Contemporary Art in Warsaw (see Atlas 3.17) was formally established, although its proper activity developed only after 1990. Since the first exhibition opening in 1992, it began to play the role of substitute for the contemporary museum missing in the capital.

The thirty-year effort after 1989 to establish new institutions dealing with modern and contemporary art and to construct new buildings also marks a period of struggle between institutions established in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries to improve the infrastructure around the premises and funds for collecting activities. The National Museum in Warsaw is struggling with the problem of the limitations of the exhibition space; in 1995–1996, a comprehensive concept for a building extension was created. Although approved by the Ministry of Culture, it was not carried out. The collections of contemporary art occupied only a few rooms, and thus in 2007, only the so-called collection highlights were displayed; in 2012, after the renovation, the Gallery of Twentieth- and Twenty-First Century Art was opened there. Similarly, the National Museum in Krakow is seeking to enlarge its exhibition space through the addition of a new wing to the main building. In 2005, the five-year renovation project of the Gallery of Twentieth-Century Polish Art was completed, but this did not solve the problem. In November 2017, the opening of the major Stanisław Wyspiański exhibition, which temporarily occupied almost the entire space, meant that the gallery ceased to exist for more than a year (only a small exhibition of highlights from the collection was organized). In 2001, a new wing of the National Museum in Poznań was opened, which included a permanent display of Polish contemporary art after 1945. In the years 1989–1992, the building of the Museum of Contemporary Sculpture was erected at the Centre of Polish Sculpture in Orońsko. In 2011, a permanent exhibition of Polish modern and contemporary art was opened to the public in the converted attic of the National Museum in Wrocław.

After Poland, Hungary had the greatest number of museums. An analogous institution to the Warsaw Zachęta is Műcsarnok (a Hungarian translation of the German word Kunsthalle), which was founded a bit later than Zachęta by the Hungarian Society of Fine Arts in Budapest (1877). The society itself was founded in 1861 with the goal of “promot[ing] every branch of our native arts to the highest possible perfection, to improve artistic taste, and to extend the love of art” (Regős 2000: 27). In the beginning, the society lacked proper headquarters and the name “Műcsarnok” appeared only in the title of its published bulletin. In 1865, it received five rooms in the building of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, then in 1877 it moved to a specially built palace on the prominent Andrássy Boulevard. In the following year, international exhibitions took place in spring and winter on a regular basis.

It soon turned out that the society’s headquarters was insufficient, thus initiating a new building project. Favorable circumstances accompanied the demand for the new building as the state prepared to celebrate the millennium of the Hungarian state, sparking a number of investments including museums (Museum of Applied Arts, and Museum of Fine Arts). In 1894, the National Assembly of the Royal and Metropolitan City decided that in the place where the Andrássy Boulevard meets the city park, an area of 4,000 square meters would be developed as a fine arts exhibition space (Gábor 2000: 5). A national exhibition, open for half a year, occupied the center of the millennium celebrations. Part of the exhibition presented cultural production and art documenting the state’s current status and economic progress, while the other offered a historical retrospective. Fine arts were included in both (Gábor 2000: 6).

Műcsarnok was designed by architect Albert Schickedanz, in keeping with the Neo-Renaissance style. He also provided designs for many other contemporaneous investments. After the commencement of construction on Műcsarnok, he was entrusted with designing the Millennium Monument at the Andrássy Boulevard terminus. In 1899, he was commissioned to design the Museum of Fine Arts across from the monument and opposite Műcsarnok. The resulting square created between these two cultural sites, located at the intersection of a park and a boulevard, was later called Heroes’ Square. However, it was impossible to achieve a uniform concept for the square owing to uneven investment activities by multiple entities. According to the plan, the building was to resemble a cathedral, with a nave and two aisles, terminating in a semi-circular apse, with a columned portico at the entrance. The opening took place in 1896, the millennium year.

During the First World War, the building housed a military hospital, but the program of regular exhibitions was continued in the entrance hall. As the restoration work came to an end, the Second World War began, bringing with it serious damage to the building. Post-war reconstruction was carried out in 1962–1965. Losing its monopoly on the implementation of regular exhibitions for the National Association of Hungarian Fine Arts after the war, the Society began to organize large thematic exhibitions. In 1952, the name Műcsarnok was changed to the Institute for Organizing Exhibitions, and then to the less awkwardly worded Exhibition Institutions. The exhibition system in Hungary had been completely centralized. The Exhibition Institutions organized all exhibitions that took place in the provinces, including cyclical and traveling exhibitions in train wagons, which during the holiday season would stop for a time at the Lake Balaton resorts. They also organized exhibitions abroad, as well as receptions for foreign exhibitions (Frank 2000: 36–47).

The Ernst Múzeum founded by the Budapest collector Lajos Ernst at the end of the nineteenth century was the first private collection in Hungary that was transformed into a private museum (1912). It was assigned to the Exhibition Institutions in the middle of the twentieth century. Its creator collected both works of art and historical artifacts (hungarica). The functional idea had been to combine the museum with a tenement house, which was to provide financial resources for its activities as well as to aggrandize the collection. The museum was located on the first floor of a tenement house (Gyula Fodor, architect) located in the city center; a cinema and shops were opened on the ground floor, while other floors were designated for flats. The collection was presented in fourteen rooms, ten of which were devoted to ten centuries of Hungarian history as a gesture toward the unrealized plans of the Millennium Exhibition. Since its opening, the museum was one of the premier cultural centers of Budapest (Róka 2002: 24). As the rental income from the apartments turned out to be insufficient to finance the museum’s needs, it undertook to organize an art auction. In the late 1920s, the museum owner’s serious financial problems resulted in the sale of the building, followed by the collection in 1932. The institution was still active, not as a museum but as exhibition space. For forty years beginning in 1953, the Ernst Museum served as an additional exhibition space for contemporary art from the former Műcsarnok.

A revolutionary change in the functioning of Műcsarnok took place in 2007 as a result of governmental budget reform, when it ceased to be a publicly financed institution. As a non-profit institution, it continued to implement all of its previous goals, tasks, and obligations. Two hitherto independent institutions – the Ernst Museum and Dorottya Gallery – became an integral part of Műcsarnok. The Ernst Museum ceased to exist in 2013, its space in the building taken by the new Robert Capa Contemporary Photography Centre.

Beyond these specialized institutions of modern and contemporary art, universal museums also engaged twentieth-century art. The largest of them, the Hungarian National Gallery (Magyar Nemzeti Galéria) was founded in 1957 for the collection and presentation of Hungarian art. In 2011, it was merged with the Museum of Fine Arts and awaits relocation to a new building, where the Hungarian and international collections from the nineteenth century to the present will be combined. Next to this state museum, the Municipal Gallery of Budapest (today located in the Kiscelli Múzeum; initially housed in the Karolyi Palace) also specializes in twentieth-century and contemporary art. Apart from Budapest, the most important collections of twentieth-century art are found in the regional museums in Pécs and Győr. The Modern Hungarian Gallery (Modern Magyar Képtár), operating as part of the Janus Pannonius Museum in Pécs, holds the second largest collection of Hungarian modern art in the country. It, too, opened in 1957, but in contrast with Hungarian National Gallery, which documents the entire cross-section of art from this period, the gallery in Pécs is focused on selected and progressive artistic trends. With funding running out since the regime change, the museum in Pécs has lost significant ground. Gábor Ébli points out that “[i]ts symbolic distance from Budapest has multiplied by now. Pécs was very close to Budapest in the 1980s, the intelligentsia would regularly commute to Pécs to see new artists. Now, Pécs is almost off the map” (Interview with Gábor Ébli 2018).

Similar to Zachęta and Műcsarnok is the somewhat younger institution in the Czech Republic, the gallery of Rudolfinum, whose history is inseparable from the beginnings of the Czech National Gallery. In 1796, the Association of Patriotic Friends of Arts founded two institutions: the Academy of Fine Arts and the public Picture Gallery of the Association of Patriotic Friends of the Arts. As the latter was not able to meet expectations for the representation of contemporary art, in 1902 the Modern Gallery of the Kingdom of Bohemia (see Vlnas 1995) was established. It was founded by Emperor Franz Joseph I as his private foundation with a view to creating a collection of twentiet...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1 The ecology of art museums before and after the 1989 political transition: an overview
• 2 The transformation of museums in Central Europe: conversations about changes and challenges
• 3 The iconic museum for Central Europe
• 4 Adaptive reuse for museums
• 5 Museums in cultural context
• 6 Private museums, art centers, and collectors
• 7 Evolutions and revolutions in grand national museums: four case studies
• 8 Contemporary art in the provinces: case study of the “Znaki Czasu” (Signs of the Time) program in Poland
• 9 Museums of Central Europe: a Central European identity?
• Atlas of museums and centers of contemporary art in Central Europe after 1989
• Bibliography
• Subject index
• Names index