Warsaw opens a new modern art museum as it tries to leave Poland's communist legacy behind

WARSAW, Poland — A modern art museum designed by American architect Thomas Phifer opens its doors in the Polish capital Friday — a minimalist, light-filled structure that is meant to be a symbol of openness and tolerance as the city tries to free itself from its communist legacy.

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.

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 threw off authoritarian communist rule 35 years ago.

Warsaw Mayor Rafał Trzaskowski said the museum's opening is a “historic moment for Warsaw" and that the project, which will later include a theater, will help to create a new city center no longer dominated by a communist symbol.

“This place will change beyond recognition, it will be a completely new center,” he said Thursday. “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 gray, sometimes drab, style of communist regimes across Eastern Europe. But years of economic growth in the post-communist era have produced modern glass architecture, cutting-edge museums and revitalized historic buildings.

The museum was built on the site of a former parking lot near the Palace of Culture and Science, a dominating Stalinist skyscraper. Though 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 recognized 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 center,” museum director Joanna Mytkowska said. “This is a building dedicated to open, equal and democratic culture.”

American and other Western architects are putting their mark on Warsaw. The city skyline includes a soaring luxury tower created by Daniel Libeskind, the renowned Polish American architect. The firm of British designer Norman Foster created the Varso Tower, which at 310 meters (1,017 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 by a reporter if he viewed the Warsaw museum as his masterpiece, the 71-year-old did not hesitate with his answer. “Of course,” he said.

He said 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 ($175 million) project. In the first weeks it will hold performances and present several large-scale sculptures and installation pieces by female artists, including Magdalena Abakanowicz, Alina Szapocznikow, Sandra Mujinga and Cecilia Vicuña. The full opening with its larger collection is scheduled for February.

The area around the building is still under construction and will eventually become what the architect calls a “forum space,” including a garden and a theater 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 said 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 said. “You don't really understand this work until you come inside and experience it with the art."

Trzaskowski, the mayor, said all 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,” Trzaskowski said. The real controversies, he added, are yet to come when the avant-garde museum starts staging its exhibitions.