A Phantom Matrix for Post-Artistic Realities. Jerzy Ludwiński’s “The Museum of Current Art in Wrocław [General Concept]”

In 1966, Jerzy Ludwiński (1930–2000), Polish art historian, a critic, a curator, accepted an invitation from the municipal authorities of Wrocław to draw up a concept for a museum.[1] However, instead of preparing an easily realizable project, he created one of an ambivalent nature, the source of which was contemporaneity that was treated both as a point of departure and as an object of veiled criticism. Wrocław, formerly called Breslau, played a particular role in the propaganda politics of the Polish communist party (Polish United Workers’ Party). As a major city of the Lower Silesia region became a part of Poland that after   Second World War, and was termed “Recovered Territories.” In accordance with this, the authorities carried outinsistent propaganda directives that emphasized the historic belonging of the Recovered Territories to the Polish homeland, they wished to implement Modern art , they put forth an intensive modernization of academic and industrial centres of Wrocław and, above all, an increase in its prestige. Ludwiński, however, was not a Party member, nor was he an official well-fitted into the bureaucratic machine; he was far from being a consummate politician or a strategist versed in behind-the-curtain conversations with local authorities and the Ministry. To some of the local politicians, artists and art critics Ludwiński’s arrival in Wrocław was supposed to cause a lot of attention, they saw him  as an exported critic, generating reserve, or even envy, with his refinement and contacts with the leading, national circles. The authorities were well-aware of the calibre of his intellectual and artistic connections. A clandestine note from 1970 operational records of the security services informed that: “He has an on-going familiarity with every new artistic orientation in the West and is a spokesman for their slogans on Polish territory.”[2] Ludwiński was a visionary, a “critic on the road,” whose life history spans Lublin, Warsaw, Wrocław, Toruń, and Poznań; and, perhaps, even an artist. He always worked on the periphery of the state system, within the limits of which he was able to mark out his own “playing field.” The “playing field” proposed by him  an was an arena for thought and reflection directed towards the future, which  revolved around art coming into being at a given time.  He attempted to  “capture” the most interesting current phenomena, to examines the logic of the development of new art at the moment when  art ceased to refer to traditional aesthetic and formal categories. The short-lived cultural institutions he created at the end of the 1960s include the Museum of Current Art, Mona Lisa Gallery, and the Centre for Artistic Research, all of which and prefigured international developments in institutional theory and institution-building elsewhere.

Performance lecture by Jerzy Ludwiński, at “Art in Changing World”, 1st Symposium of artists and scientists, Zakłady Azotowe chemical factory, Puławy. Archive Museum of Modern Art Warsaw photo: Eustachy Kossakowski

A General Concept for the Museum of Current Art in Wrocław is Jerzy Ludwiński’s first text dedicated strictly to institutional theory. The ten pages of standard typescript contain five sections: an introduction, “facts” giving justification to the establishment of the museum, a characterization of the specificity of the new institution, a description of departments, and preparatory works planned for a period of two years. The program, produced in the autumn of 1966, was based on new artistic tendencies, such as Conceptual art. Nevertheless, the program went beyond being solely an artistic project, and reflected also a how reality was created in the People’s Republic: on many levels, Ludwiński took seriously—and ironically—the rhetoric of the political establishment. The system extended from the Party’s prognostic directives, determining economic growth, and ended at a structure of phantom full-time jobs (existent in the state domain of culture), masking actual activities or a complete lack thereof.Mindful of the motivations of the local authorities, which were a fusion of political and ideological premises, theorist Ludwiński, in his programs for the Museum of Current Art (MCA) and, subsequently, for the Mona Lisa Gallery, Centre for Art Research made use of the gesture of free distribution (of the concept, the notion, the idea), characteristic of activities of late 1960s artists related to Mail art. This one, just as the subsequent strategies employed by curator Ludwiński corresponded to activities undertaken at the time by Seth Siegelaub or Lucy Lippard, searching for models of alternative networks of art and guerrilla strategies, responding to actual needs of a given moment. In this case a kind of art was foregrounded that  strove towards maximum diversity and indeterminacy, depreciating the aesthetic character of the artwork. The unofficial  “understanding” worked out by the Polish People’s Republic between society and the authorities postulated that art and its institutions should avoid the politicization of language and any expression of criticism directed at the system. The impulse to reflect on the functioning of institutions in Poland at the time was awakened to to a great extent by transformations within the apolitical sphere of art:  that is, the evolution of the concept of the artwork, a sudden burgeoning of existing and original forms of expression, the appearance of conceptual activities, of “impossible” art. 


In the whole of Poland there is no Museum of Modern Art.
Although many museums, and especially the Art Museum
(Muzeum Sztuki) in Łódź, have departments of contemporary
art, the theoretical foundations of these departments and their
contents are not able to fulfil either the social needs or the interest
that Polish art attracts from abroad.
There should be several museums of this kind in Poland. At
present, however, Wrocław has a chance to initiate a project that
would make it the first, and for some time probably the only city in
Poland to have a separate gallery of modern art.
 
There are several arguments for siting such a gallery in Wrocław:
1. Wrocław’s very young and dynamic artistic circle has placed the
city higher and higher in the hierarchy of Polish artistic circles.
At the moment it can be found in third place, after Warsaw
and Cracow. The creation of the Museum of Current Art would
promote Wrocław not only on the Polish art scene, but also
internationally.
2. Wrocław is a very powerful centre, as far as other disciplines,
especially science, are concerned. The existence of the gallery
here would create an environment for relations between artists
and scientists. Contacts of this nature, rarely undertaken, are
still insufficient. The results of such an exchange could prove
extraordinary.
3. Wrocław, in a way similar to the district of Dolny Śląsk, and also
to the neighbouring lands, is a highly industrialised area. This
industry has often been developed from scratch. The creation
of a base for new forms of production, and an experimental
studio connected to it, could influence in a rather radical way,
the logical shaping of future reality; starting with enormous
factories and ending with their products.
4. The creation of the only Museum of Current Art in Wrocław
would be related to the process of the decentralisation of Polish
culture. It would be an expansion of modern artistic thought
into one of the most western districts of the country. The
attractiveness of this Museum abroad may also contribute to the
popularisation of Polish achievements in the Western Lands.01
5. Wrocław, along with the rest of the Western Lands, is a city with
an exceptionally large number of young people. The Museum
would create conditions for the popularisation of modern art. It
would be possible to influence the artistic taste of the majority of
society.

Jerzy Ludwiński’s “The Museum of Current Art in Wrocław [General Concept],” in Notes from the Future of Art. Selected Writings by Jerzy Ludwiński, ed. Magdalena Ziółkowska, Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven 2007.

By the end of 1966, the General Concept had not seen any sort of publication. Probably the political establishment was shocked by its form, its novelty, its different way of thinking about an art institution, which was unlike any other concepts of historical or national museums at that time. Ludwiński’s proposal questioned the institution of the museum as a historical formation founded upon a collection and a narrative based on this describing and enshrining an aesthetic canon, determining exclusions and inclusions, constructing a national identity.[3] In 1967, it was copiously quoted in  a minor publication of the official artists association “Biuletyn Informacyjny ZPAP” [“The Polish Association of Artists and Designers News Bulletin”], in  an article mainly on artists groups in Wroclaw,  and it was also mentioned in a chronicle produced as part of a report from a congress of the Association. Besides the private circulation set out by its author, it did not become known in a wider circle of art audiences[4]. A lack of letters and stenographic records of meetings between Ludwiński and state authorities, of decisions defining an organizational framework of the projected institution, and a semi-official nature of the preparation enforced an emphasis on its conceptual character in art historians’ interpretations Most historians between the 1960s and 2000s described this project as purely conceptual, they did not interpret it as a “serious project” that could be realized. Consequently, little was written about MCA, partially because it was not seriously taken, and also as, before the 2000s, Ludwiński was not widely known. From the 2000s, whenever  MCA entered the orbit of researchers’ interests, —after Polish art historians, such as Pawel Polit or Luiza Nader began to analyze the 1960s-1970s and conceptual art tendencies in general—it was referred to as a “conceptual matrix,” an impossible museum, the author’s failure. It was frequently treated as a micro-utopia sketched out on a coffee napkin, so much as to be ridiculous when confronted with serious, educational-propagandist instructions of museology in other parts of the country[5] Reasons for a lack of its construction on the part of municipal authorities are also unknown.

Already the first reading of the General Concept produces an impression of a balanced and well-considered statement, abounding in original metaphors, a carefully prepared instruction. The author combines there a detachment and an impersonal narrative with a colloquially colored form of language.[6] Ludwiński undertook a thought-out polemic with postulates of city officials, for whom a supreme role was played by a realization of insistent propaganda directives, i.e., emphasizing a historic belonging of the “Recovered Territories” to the Polish homeland, an intensive modernization of academic and industrial centers of the very city of Wrocław and, above all, an increase in its prestige. The Socialist authorities considered contemporary art as one of the achievements of the civilization of the People’s Republic, while experiments in the fields of visual arts, science, and technology further legitimized the official discourse of modernity. As Alicja Kępińska argued: “In an anciently agrarian country, undergoing a rapid modernization, which introduces abrupt changes both into the landscape and the structure of social consciousness, there develops … a myth of grand industrial objects: factories, shipyards, steelworks – as testing grounds of modernity.”[7]


Departments
The general concept of the museum includes […] six
departments. (1. The Department of Action, 2. The Department of Visual Experiments, 3. The Collections Department, 4. The Department for the Popularisation of Art, 5. The Publications Department, 6. The Technical Department).
 
            2. The Department of Visual Experiments
Here, research into the ‘behaviour’ of various forms in space would
be conducted. Based on scientific methods they would be as precise
as possible. Experiments in the field of the psychology of forms
and colours, and in other scientific fields useful for these purposes,
would take place here. This department should initiate close
relations with the Wrocław circles of mathematicians, physicians,
cyberneticians, and other scientists, whose different ways of thinking
could influence artistic visions and ideas of art in a very fruitful
manner. Such relations could also have purely practical results, in
programming various appliances, producing a range of surprising
optical phenomena, and in explaining these.
This department would remind one of an ongoing symposium of
artists and scientists from various disciplines. Some time later it
could be converted into a studio for visual forms – a professional
scientific institute based on the example of institutes of this kind
existing in the West, the lack of which is painfully felt in Poland. It
would be an institution providing service to industry, commerce,
architecture, visual propaganda, and many other areas of work, which
would have at its disposal a wide range of new, neatly designed and
functional forms.
 

Jerzy Ludwiński’s “The Museum of Current Art in Wrocław [General Concept],” in Notes from the Future of Art. Selected Writings by Jerzy Ludwiński, ed. Magdalena Ziółkowska, Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven 2007.

The MCA program seems to respond to the demands set out by the party, while it also grew out of the area’s local tradition of a network of conferences, symposia, festivals, outdoor activities, which organized and shaped the artistic reality of the Polish People’s Republic. Taking place in provincial centers (like Elbląg, Zielona Góra, Miastko) they brought together artistic activities and created occasions for discussion. Their existence was written into the ideological calendar and, as Piotr Piotrowski has observed, constituted a characteristic “social agreement” between the artistic community and the communist authorities. As initiatives either of local artists or of  Party functionaries, these meetings, organized mostly in the “Recovered Territories”, embodied the postulates for collective activity, and legitimated the “proletarian artistic culture confirming ‘the leading role of the working class'”[8]. Perceived by and valued by artists as nation-wide platforms for the interchange of ideas and methods of practice, these meetings indicated a powerful need for communal confrontation and discussion. By means of their illusion of a diversity of discourses, their interdisciplinary character and the neutral space of their depoliticized language, these open-air meetings continued to be strictly controlled by the authorities. The MCA project coincided with a time of instability of the institutional format, to which the form of the open-air meetings corresponded The previously established categories of the museum showed themselves to be somewhat narrow, illusive, and even irrelevant.

Work by Andrzej Pawłowski at the “Art in Changing World”, 1st Symposium of artists and scientists initiated and organized by Jerzy Ludwiński, Zakłady Azotowe chemical factory, Puławy. Archive Museum of Modern Art Warsaw photo: Eustachy Kossakowski


1. The Department of Action
            This would be the most important department shaping the
character of the institution as a whole. It would hold artistic
exhibitions, experiments, demonstrations, events, but also
theoretical lectures, readings and discussions. In this department,
confrontation with the most interesting artistic proposals would
continuously take place. Not only would artists who have already
made interesting works be invited to this department, but also
those who would seem able to make such works in situ. There
would certainly be no limits to the means of artistic expression.
The organisers would be most interested in these artistic and
theoretical propositions which would enrich the concept of art and
render its former borders out of date. This type of activity would, at
the same time, be directed against rigid conventions and stagnation in art.
All the exhibitions and artistic presentations in the museum
should reflect the incredible variety of contemporary art. Therefore,
the department of action would be a playing field for diverse,
often controversial artistic statements; an experimental range – a
source of new tendencies. The recent emergence of some facts in
Polish art suggests that there is a chance for realising a project of
this kind. The emergence of new galleries (over thirty in Warsaw),
diverse plein airs, symposia, meetings, conferences and festivals, on
a mass scale proves the existence of an intensiveness in the artistic
movement, never before experienced in Poland. It is important
to give this phenomenon institutional support and to facilitate
its further development. The aim of the organisers of the gallery
would be to provoke a situation in which the majority of the most
interesting artistic phenomena would emerge in the gallery’s space.
 
 
4. The Department for the Popularisation of Art would have
at its disposal sets of reproductions of works of art from various
periods, with a particular emphasis on the works of the great
masters of the twentieth century. These sets of reproductions,
accompanied by an explanatory commentary, would be sent out
to schools, cultural centres, common rooms and factories, where
the museum would organise popular lectures and screenings of
films on art. The aim of this project would be to educate a new
spectator, who would enthusiastically react to contemporary
artistic phenomena demonstrated both in the museum and in
other exhibition spaces.

Jerzy Ludwiński’s “The Museum of Current Art in Wrocław [General Concept],” in Notes from the Future of Art. Selected Writings by Jerzy Ludwiński, ed. Magdalena Ziółkowska, Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven 2007.

The first manifestation of the activities of the MCA was the so-called “plebiscite exhibition,” organized in April 1967, in the Gothic Rooms of the Town Hall, which left the local milieu under no illusion as to the scale of the program’s originality. Ludwiński invited to the exhibition not so much the artists, but rather three galleries—the most important avant-garde galleries of that time, those which shared a similar intellectual perspective—representing art milieus of Warsaw (Foksal), Krakow (Krzysztofory), and Wrocław (the future Mona Lisa Gallery). His gesture thus gave support not only to particular institutions, but also to other, broadly understood, “unofficial galleries.” These  were the places—in opposition to the official exhibition salons, the network of local Bureaus of Art Exhibitions [BEAs], set up to exhibit and promote local contemporary art and cultural production—and the numerous clubs, community and culture centers, which “concentrated the most authentic exhibition movement, where the most unconventional and daring pieces were produced, and new messages in art were emerging.”[9] It was the galleries which often provided an institutional shelter to radical artistic manifestations, such as conceptual art practices or unidentified art, constitutive elements of which became new categories of the work of art: the approach, the creative process, the fact of art, the concept.

Installation view of the 1st manifestation of the Museum of Current Art, the “plebiscite exhibition” at the Wroclaw Town Hall Archive Museum of Contemporary Art Wroclaw Photo: Zdzislaw Holuka


Exhibitions
 
            3. A plebiscite exhibition prepared by a group of fifteen of the most renowned critics, art theorists and gallery directors. Each of the
experts invited prepares his/her own set of works by the artist
whose careers he/she follows with great interest and whom he/
she promotes. Everyone would have at his/her disposal a space
of the same size and unlimited freedom to fill it. An exhibition
of this type would be an authentic and distilled survey of the
current state of Polish art. The catalogue would include fifteen
separate introductions; directly or indirectly outlining the
criteria for the selection of artists.

Jerzy Ludwiński’s “The Museum of Current Art in Wrocław [General Concept],” in Notes from the Future of Art. Selected Writings by Jerzy Ludwiński, ed. Magdalena Ziółkowska, Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven 2007.

In recent years, Ludwiński’s institutional projects entered the orbit of artists’, critics’ and curators’ interests, in Poland and abroad. Defining the museum as a “sensitive seismometer,” a “catalyst,” a “testing ground,” a “crucible” of novel tendencies and approaches, situating the categories of “risk,” “quick reaction,” “individual responsibility” within its realms related the MCA program to postulates put forward e.g. in discussions of the “new institutionalism.”


The Specification for the Museum
 
The Museum of Current Art would differ fundamentally from
all other existing galleries which have been departments of big
museums. Its uniqueness would lie not in narrowing the field of
problems, but, on the contrary, in expanding it with issues which,
until now, have not been regarded as important.
 
The essential differences, which will make the future museum
unique, can be presented as follows:
1. In all museums (except perhaps the museum in Łódź) modern
art, treated as marginal, is merely a supplement to the often very
rich collections of ancient art. Here, modern art would play the
leading role.
2. Contemporary visual arts are often treated retrospectively in
museums, as the last fragment of art history; as closed as all
previous artistic eras. Here, they would exist as a continuously
changing open system.
3. The presentation of modern art in museums, and the choice of
works for particular exhibition rooms, is determined by their
permanent exhibitions of ancient art. This is the reason why
curators are not willing to present untypical, original works,
and why they wait for the historical resonance of these works.
Meanwhile, it is common knowledge, that so-called ‘untypical’
works often play the leading role in the development of art. Thus,
caution needs to be replaced by risk.
The organisers of the new museum should also react very quickly
and conscientiously to artistic phenomena currently emerging.
4. Hitherto existing art galleries are constituted by collections of
works of art which have already been created. That is why their
character is static and purely consumerist. The existence of a
collection in the new museum should not be a priority. Here,
one should react to artistic facts as soon as they emerge. Here,
the artistic process itself may become more interesting than
a finished work of art. This testifies to the gallery’s maximum
activity and continuous artistic events.
5. Galleries of modern art, situated in museums, have a delayed
reaction to artistic phenomena, the emergence of which they do
not want to have any influence over. The example of the Museum
of Current Art is different. It has to provoke artistic facts, advance
them, and simply, it has to be a place where new art is being
created, a gentle seismograph and, at the same time, a catalyst.
6. The name of the Museum of Current Art would therefore be
a conventional one, while the institution would have more in
common with an artistic atelier than a traditional museum.
            ….
 
            A museum of art conceived in this way does not require a large
capacity building nor a big budget. It should be a small museum.
The attention of the programme curators is not concentrated on
the museum’s size, but on its separate and specific artistic profile.
The realisation of this programme and its continuation seems very
difficult. It forces the organisers to have a thorough knowledge
of Polish artistic circles and of the most recent work of particular
artists, to be acquainted with the international art scene and to be
able to act with precision.

Jerzy Ludwiński’s “The Museum of Current Art in Wrocław [General Concept],” in Notes from the Future of Art. Selected Writings by Jerzy Ludwiński, ed. Magdalena Ziółkowska, Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven 2007.

When the first museums of modern and contemporary art such as Wrocław Contemporary Museum, Museum of Contemporary Art in Kraków, and Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw launched their activities over 10 years ago, their directors consulted this historical example as their ideological foundation and a signpost for their own institutions. Thanks to numerous reprints, the critic’s archive having been made public and an English language anthology of Ludwiński’s texts published by the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven (2007)[10], the critic’s theoretical output gained international attention. Ludwiński also became an informal patron of the Consortium of Post-Artistic Practices[11], dedicated to movements and activities from beyond the immediate field of art, to protests and forms of opposition, in times when “we are not dealing with art. Simply because we had missed the moment when it transformed into something entirely else, which we cannot define.”[12]

MCA was supposed to treat contemporary visual art as being subject to constant changes; it heralded an “open system.” Its constituent elements have become new categories, degrading the physical coherence of a work of art not subject to museification. Instead of reification, posture, creative process, and artistic concept was emphasized. Close to the architectural radicalism of Oskar Hansen’s plan for the Museum of Contemporary Art’s in Skopje, also from 1966, MCA resisted all axioms, was open to non-aesthetic contexts, and assumed the arrangement of artistic actions undermining the stability of institutions and eliminating predictability. Speculation about the timeliness and future of art was superior to meticulous research into its past. Curiosity and doubt replaced the infallibility and unwavering certainty of the canon. Openness to novelty, challenge, and otherness took the place of stagnation and tradition. In the area of ​​historical categories, Ludwiński’s own concepts referred to the new, changed space of artistic practices. The “field of play” he proposed meant a platform of ideas and reflections directed towards the future, devoted to art created at a given time and “catching” the most interesting phenomena.

With MCA and also the program he wrote later for the so-called “Center for Artistic Research,”  Ludwiński envisioned to replace, historical and archival research with futuristic methods, reflecting the future, expanding the art collections—with actions using the local industrial infrastructure and experts’ authority—and the participation of the public in criticism or even in the creation of art. In the eyes of Ludwiński, the Center for Artistic Research, operating in Wroclaw as a small dynamic cell, would spread like a virus, infecting more places in the country and in Europe. This ambition, while huge, was tempered by the idea that the institution itself might simply fade away, perhaps completely abandoning its physical form and becoming more of a literal convention. It is just this skillful management of institutional politics with a kind of futuristic ambition to become something else entirely that differentiates Ludwinski’s MCA from a simple, unrealized proposal. Instead, the concept becomes something else – a text about what could never be perhaps, or a guide to how to deal with impossibility and the political mantra of pragmatism and measurable outcomes. This is precisely what still makes it relevant today. 

Portrait Jerzy Ludwiński Archive Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw Photo: Eustachy Kossakowski



[1] People responsible for Jerzy Ludwiński’s arrival to Wrocław were Jan Chwalczyk, the initiator of the invitation, the then employee of the Bureau of Art Exhibition [BWA] as its artistic director, and Jerzy Nowak, a member of the Municipal Council of Culture.

[2] Quoted in: Wrocław, dnia 22.08.1970 r., tajne, Informacja dot. działalności nieoficjalnych salonów wystawowych sztuki – materiały SB (IPN Wr 054/1626). [Wrocław, 22.08.1970, classified, A note on activities on unofficial art exhibition salons – records of the Security Service],“Dyskurs”, 2006/2007, no. 6, p. 168. The employment of Jerzy Ludwiński as a clerk in the City of Wrocław Department of Culture, which was a kind of pretext for bringing the critic to Wrocław, can be considered an instance of such a fictitious full-time position. Also, Ewa Ludwińska, his wife at the time, cannot offer any further information on the subject.

[3]           Compare, among others, Ludwiński’s text The function and meaning of unofficial galleries, text of a paper delivered to Spektrum Galerii i Salonów Debiutów, Rogalin, October 1967, in: Jerzy Ludwiński, Art in a post-art age, and other texts, ed. J. Kozłowski, Poznań, Wrocław 2009, p. 34.

[4]           Anonymous, Wrocławskie galerie sztuki. „Biuletyn Informacyjny ZPAP” March-April 1967, nr 43/44, pp. 12–14; Kronika. „Biuletyn Informacyjny ZPAP” May-June 1967, nr 45/46, p. 26.

[5]              Cf. Uchwały XVII Zjazdu Delegatów Związku Muzeów w Nieborowie (1946) dotyczące kierunków rozwoju muzealnictwa na Ziemiach Odzyskanych. [Resolutions of the 17th Congress of Delegates of the Union of Museums (1946) concerning the directions of development of museology in the Recovered Territories]. Quoted in: Janusz Albin, Nowoczesność u drzwi muzeów [Modernity at the Door of Museums], “Odra”, 1967, no. 6, p. 57.

[6] Colloquiality “acquired a particular significance in a state of totalitarian organisation on ideological grounds, such as Poland in the period of communist rule. Colloquiality as a linguistic-cultural category founded on the notion of anthropocentricity became – alongside ‘common sense’, a perspective of a ‘regular person’ and a social conception of ‘normality’ – sharply contrasted to officialdom founded on the notions of the office and ideology.” Quoted in: Janusz Anusiewicz, Potoczność jako sposób doświadczania świata i jako postawa wobec świata [Colloquiality as a Manner of Experiencing the World and an Attitude towards the World], in, J. Anusiewicz, F. Nieckula(eds.), Język a kultura. T. 5: Potoczność w języku i w kulturze [Language versus Culture, Vol. 5, Colloquiality in Language and in Culture], Wrocław, 1992, pp. 11–12, and 50.

[7] Quoted in, Alicja Kępińska, Nowa sztuka. Sztuka polska w latach 1945–1978. [New Art. Polish Art in 1945–1978], Warszawa, 1981, p. 150.

[8] P. Piotrowski, The meanings of modernism: on Polish art after 1945, Poznań 1999, p. 125. In his text Art and technology (1969) Ludwiński describes linking the studio, the main department of the museum, and industrial units in Wrocław – see J. Ludwiński, Art and technology, paper read during the 2nd Katowice Meeting of Creators and Theorists of Art, Katowice 1969. Quoted from J. Ludwiński, Art in a post-art era, and other texts, op. cit., p. 47.

[9]   Quoted in, J. Ludwiński, Funkcja i znaczenie galerii nieoficjalnych [Function and Significance of Unofficial Galleries], op. cit., p. 31.

[10]  Notes from the Future of Art. Selected Writings by Jerzy Ludwiński, ed. Magdalena Ziółkowska, Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven 2007.

[11]  Consortium of Post-Artistic Practices is an informal and interdisciplinary alliance of art people who use their imagination and artistic skills outside the field of art. They engage in anti-fascist coalitions, fight for the rights of women, artists and workers, react to refugee crisis. Its first gathering took place in Lublin in June 2017.

[12]Jerzy Ludwiński, Sztuka w epoce postartystycznej [Art in a Post-Artistic Era], in, SP. Sztuka pojęciowa [katalog wystawy] [CA. Conceptual Art] (exhibition catalogue), Wrocław, 1970.

Magdalena Ziółkowska holds a PhD in Art History, is a curator, and graduate of the Institute of Art History, University of Warsaw, School for Social Research in Warsaw. Her research and writing focus is the history of exhibitions and display, artists’ writings, and postwar museology. Between 2006 and 2010, she worked as guest curator at the Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, where she realized projects such as Notes From the Future of Art. Selected Writings of Jerzy Ludwiński (2007) and Andrzej Wróblewski. To the Margin and Back (2010), both accompanied by publications. In 2012, she co-founded the Andrzej Wróblewski Foundation. Between 2008 and 2014, she worked as a curator at the Muzeum Sztuki in Lodz, latest she was director (2015–2018) of the Gallery of Contemporary Art Bunkier Sztuki in Krakow.

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