The Museum of Contemporary Sculpture, which has been operating since 1992 and is headquartered at the Center for Polish Sculpture in Orońsko, has announced that it has secured funding for the long-announced modernization of the Orońsko complex. The project is expected to consume more than PLN 55 million. What are the assumptions of the modernization and where will the money for it come from?
The Center for Polish Sculpture in Orońsko was born as the Center for Creative Work of Sculptors, which hosted numerous creative workshops and outdoor exhibitions in the 1960s. The home for the new institution became a 19th-century mansion complex, which before the war belonged to Jozef Brandt, a Polish painter representing the Munich school. Nationalized in 1945, the palace complex initially housed the State Fishery Farm, but due to the activity of sculptors working in the surrounding quarries, it was allocated for cultural purposes in 1965.
In 1981, the Polish Sculpture Center was established there, and in 1992 the Museum of Contemporary Sculpture opened. Since then, in addition to its animation activities and its function as a creative house, the institution gathers its own collections and organizes up to a dozen exhibitions a year. Such a rich program requires adequate infrastructure, which has become severely outdated over the past 30 years. This is set to change in the coming years, according to the Orońsko facility.
Expansion of the Museum of Contemporary Sculpture in Orońsko
vision: emgieprojekt © Center for Polish Sculpture in Orońsko
Museum of Contemporary Sculpture enters the 21st century
One of the newer buildings within the palace complex used by the Center for Polish Sculpture in Oronsko is the building of the Museum of Contemporary Sculpture, erected in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The author of the project was Wojciech Gęsiak. After more than three decades of use, the Museum building will undergo modernization. An entrance pavilion in the form of a glass atrium will be built on the north side, while a new exhibition hall will be added on the south side. The project also calls for the erection of a small building serving administrative and office functions, equipped with an archive and educational spaces.
The reconstruction concept was developed by the Kielce-based Emgieprojekt office, and the work will be financed thanks to funds received from the FEnIKS social revitalization program. In addition to the architectural intervention, the funds will also be used, among other things, for the purchase of necessary equipment, raising the competence of the staff, digitizing the collection, educational activities and establishing international cooperation.
Expansion of the Museum of Contemporary Sculpture in Oronsko - entrance pavilion (from the side of the cafe)
image: emgieprojekt © Polish Sculpture Center in Orońsko
it's the inside that counts
The building of the CCA will also undergo changes that are difficult to find in the attached visualizations - it will be mainly modernization of the exhibition spaces inside, which will be adjusted to modern standards. During the conference on the expansion, we heard the story of the dismantling of the roof for the purpose of bringing Anish Kapoor 's several-ton sculptures into the exhibition halls. As Dr. Maciej Aleksandrowicz informed us, thanks to the reconstruction such situations will be a thing of the past. The renovated MRW will also house studio storage facilities.
Expansion of the Museum of Contemporary Sculpture in Oronsko - entrance pavilion
vision: emgieprojekt © Polish Sculpture Center in Orońsko
glazed welcome
The biggest change in the layout of the Center will be the addition of a spacious glass entrance pavilion to the north-facing facade, bringing together various functions that the existing building could not allow. There will be a public, non-ticketed space where the Center plans to hold events and small exhibitions. Within the new lobby there will also be a bookstore serving the Center's thriving publishing house, a breakout space and a café. The latter are intended to broaden the audience of the Center, which is far from large urban centers. So far, it has been possible to dine or relax primarily within the park and at the so-called Sculptor's House, where accommodations and home-cooked meals are offered, as well as access to a café. Now all these facilities will also be located in the main building of the Museum of Contemporary Sculpture in Oronsko.
Expansion of the Museum of Contemporary Sculpture in Oronsko - social hall
image: emgieprojekt © Polish Sculpture Center in Orońsko
social place
The Orońsko Sculpture Center is to become a place that activates the local community. As the facility's director, Maciej Aleksandrowicz, PhD, pointed out during the press conference, the Center has already succeeded in involving the local senior citizen community. For their needs, the Museum of Contemporary Sculpture will offer a specially prepared space, the so-called Social Activation Room, where meetings, workshops and other initiatives will be held. The room will also serve as a conference room and space for the Local Competence Center.
Expansion of the Museum of Contemporary Sculpture in Oronsko
image: emgieprojekt © Polish Sculpture Center in Orońsko
chaotic expansion
The new building of the Museum of Contemporary Sculpture will not be an architectural pearl. Although the project presented at the conference was developed with great sensitivity to the functional needs and the social, spatial and geographical conditions in which the Polish Sculpture Center inOrońsko, it is hard to resist the impression that the individual, new fragments are chaotically distributed growths that have nothing to do with the existing architectural structure of the building from the early 1990s.as well as other buildings located in the park. The most intrusive element in its expression will certainly become a large, glazed atrium, located asymmetrically in the building's northern elevation. Together with the new eastern pavilion, which will also be equipped with large glazing, and the buildings of the guardhouse and Wozownia Gallery, they will create a backdrop for the square organizing the space in front of the MRW.
Orońsko deserves more
The architectural intervention in the Museum of Contemporary Sculpture will certainly have a positive impact on its daily operation, raise the standard of work and introduce new possibilities for organizing exhibitions. Looking at the project, however, one can feel justifiably unsatisfied and get the impression that one of the most important institutions related to contemporary art, located within one of the most interesting 19th-century palace assumptions, deserves more.
