Jarosław Suchan Ousted from Poland’s Muzeum Sztuki
Interim director Jarosław Suchan on April 26 was pressured from his put up as interim director of the Muzeum Sztuki in Łódź, Poland. His alternative, Andrzej Biernacki, was chosen by Jarosław Sellin, Poland’s deputy minister of tradition and nationwide heritage. Suchan, recognized for his promotion of Polish avant-garde artists and for his connections to the worldwide artwork world, had led the establishment since 2006. Biernacki, an artist whose work hews intently to the type of Francis Bacon, has since 1991 run the non-public Browarna Gallery in Łowicz, a city of about 28,000 midway between Warsaw and Łódź.
“I’m not going to eliminate the conceptual artwork that was acquired for the gathering and is exhibited,” Biernacki instructed Polish information website Wyborcza. “However I intend to diversify the [work on] supply, introduce different narratives. Nobody mentioned that it’s best to solely cope with pro-environmental, gender or queer artwork that’s promoted by the Western cultural establishments.” Biernacki went on to stipulate his intention to show away from amassing the work of worldwide artists and as an alternative to give attention to that by Polish artists, particularly these from Łódź. Suchan, against this, throughout his tenure as director established relationships with the Museum of Fashionable Artwork in New York and with the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid, organizing a significant retrospective of the work of Katarzyna Kobro and Władysław Strzemiński that started on the Reina Sofía and traveled to the Centre Pompidou in Paris. He moreover established the MS2 department of Muzeum Sztuki within the metropolis’s revitalized Manufaktura district and oversaw the renovation of M1, house to the museum’s famed Neoplastic Room and host of exhibitions of up to date and fashionable artwork, and the restoration of M3, within the Herbst Palace, the place the museum’s outdated masters are displayed.
The in a single day change in management—Sellin nominated Biernacki for the function on April 25—outraged many within the Polish arts group. “I’m shocked by this choice,” mentioned Małgorzata Ludwisiak, chief curator at NOMUS Artwork Museum in Gdańsk. Ludwisiak, a former director of the Middle for Up to date Artwork Ujazdowski Citadel, was beforehand deputy director of Muzeum Sztuki. “The change from a extremely competent world-class specialist who made Muzeum Sztuki the second MoMA into a person who runs a non-public gallery in Łowicz is hardly rational.”
Although the swiftness of Suchan’s downfall was surprising, his ousting was not fully sudden, having been telegraphed in December 2021, when the Ministry of Artwork and Tradition led by Piotr Gliński declined to resume his contract as director, as an alternative providing him the put up of appearing director, with a contract of 1 12 months. “I assumed that I’d learn upfront,” Suchan mentioned ruefully, “and within the meantime it occurred in a single day.” Ought to a contest open for the everlasting place, Suchan mentioned he has little interest in making use of. “I have been dwelling in uncertainty for the reason that center of final 12 months,” he famous, including flatly, “I’m fed up.”
