Museum of Art in Łódź – ms²
Modern and contemporary art in a converted weaving mill beside the Manufaktura complex.
Muzeum Sztuki in Łódź traces its origin to 1930, when the city accepted the International Collection of Modern Art assembled by the a.r. group around Władysław Strzemiński, Katarzyna Kobro and Henryk Stażewski. Artists including Hans Arp, Max Ernst, Fernand Léger and Kurt Schwitters gave works directly, making this one of the earliest public collections of avant-garde art anywhere. The museum now runs three sites in Łódź: ms1 on Gdańska Street, ms² on Ogrodowa Street and the Herbst Palace Museum.
ms² opened in 2008 in a former high weaving mill of 1895, part of Izrael Poznański's cotton works and now attached to the Manufaktura complex. Its wide brick halls carry the collection of twentieth- and twenty-first-century art together with large temporary shows. The permanent display Ways of Seeing draws on the museum's holdings and reflects on the institution itself, while Strzemiński's reconstructed Neoplastic Room remains at the ms1 building.
Highlights
- Collection begun in 1930 by the a.r. avant-garde group
- Galleries in an 1895 weaving mill of the Poznański cotton works
- Ways of Seeing, the permanent display of the museum collection
- Neighbouring Manufaktura complex in the same former factory quarter
