The Gallery of Polish Design at the National Museum in Warsaw

Abstract

The paper describes the NMW Gallery of Polish Design, which opened in December 2017. The new exhibition presenting Polish design from the 19th and 20th centuries to the present day features completed mass-production objects alongside outstanding works by Polish artists which never saw the light of day and remain only as designs, models or prototypes. The items brought together in the gallery and the archival materials explaining their historical context show how artists shaped people’s physical environment through the 20th and into the 21st century. As visitors proceed through the successive decades, they observe the characteristic stylistic shifts and learn about the various associations, institutions and artistic centres which left their mark on the development of design as we know it today. The main objective behind the gallery is to allow visitors to become better acquainted with what this elusive and often hard to define notion of design really represents.