Kraków, Poland

MOCAK

MOCAK – a new place for Polish and International contemporary art The Museum of Contemporary Art in Kraków is the first museum of contemporary art in Poland to have been built from scratch. The building was constructed on the site of Schindler’s former factory in Zabłocie, Kraków’s postindustrial district, which has been undergoing dynamic revitalisation in recent years. The building has been designed by Claudio Nardi, an Italian architect and interior designer, who works within the framework of the neomodernist architectural tendency. In his works, Nardi takes on problems of transformation and the relations between innovation and history, form and function, and product and communication. MOCAK will be collecting, archiving and providing access to an international art collection, presenting the development of art during the last twenty years and relating the most recent artistic phenomena to the tradition of postwar art. The programme of the institution also comprises research and publishing programmes as well as educational activity, which will be carried out with the aim of establishing new audiences.

History of the Creation of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Krakow The project of the creation of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Krakow goes back to 1983, when correspondence was first exchanged with the City Council referring to the creation of such an institution. Consultations followed for another two years, but they did not venture beyond general declarations of good will. In 1993, the City Council proposed to create a Branch of Modern Art as part of the Historical Museum of Krakow, with the preferred location being the former ‘Lenin’s House’ in Królowej Jadwigi Street. However, the lack of any prospect of willingness by the City Council to provide suitable finance put paid to the matter. In 2004,Waldemar Dąbrowski, the minister of culture at the time, announced the programme Signs of the Times in order to organise regional collections and centres of contemporary art. During the same year, the Municipality of Krakow repossessed Schindler’s former factory for nonpayment of debts. In 2007, an 11-strong jury, under the presidency of Professor Konrad Kucz-Kuczyński, chose the works of Claudio Nardi and Leonard Maria Proli as winners of the competition for the Museum building. The design submitted by the firm Claudio Nardi Architette proposed erecting a new building on the site of Schindler’s former factory and adaptation of the six existing buildings. Building works began in December 2009. On the 16th November 2010, the building of MOCAK will be officially inaugurated.

Photo by Raphael Sosin

Europaconcorsi Beta

MOCAK