Magdalena Anna Nowak – is an art historian and curator, graduate of the College of Inter-Faculty Individual Studies in the Humanities of the University of Warsaw (diploma at the Institute of Art History, 2010) and a doctoral student at the Graduate School for Social Research of the Polish Academy of Sciences. Between 2011 and 2012, she worked at the Art Department of the Royal Łazienki Museum in Warsaw, where she took part in organizing exhibitions and publishing catalogues (e.g., Rembrandt and Others. The Royal Collection of Stanislaus Augustus, 2011). Since 2012, she has worked as an assistant in the Collection of Modern Art of the National Museum in Warsaw (New Media Collection). She curated the following exhibitions: “Nie śpimy!” [No sleep!] (BWA, Zielona Góra, 2010) and “Microhistories” (Królikarnia, 2013–14). Between 2010 and 2011, she was Zofia Kulik’s assistant at the Kwiekulik Archive; she was the content editor and author of texts published in KwieKulik (2012). She has published, i.a.: The complicated history of Einfühlung (2011), Kino jako archiwum mrocznych nieujawnionych treści. Sztuka wideo Douglasa Gordona i Pierre’a Hughe’a [Cinema as an archive of the dark and repressed thoughts. Douglas Gordon’s and Pierre Hughe’s video art] (2012), Bill Viola’s Synthetic Atlases (2013), Bill Viola’s “The Passions” and Aby Warburg’s “Survival” Theory: Post-Modernism, Empathy and Déja Vu (2014). She is interested in video art, the theory of art, relations between old and contemporary art, empathy and Aby Warburg’s theory. She is currently working on a doctoral thesis on Bill Viola’s art in the context of the empathic and emotional reception of art, using Aby Warburg’s Pathosformel method.
