Museum

Museum

Since 2018 The Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw has belonged to the group of L'Internationale – a confederation of institutions dealing with modern and contemporary art. Between 2023 and 2027, MSN will be the leader of „Museum of the Commons” project, implemented by a total of 17 museums and art institutions.

L’Internationale is a confederation of major European museums, art institutions, research centres and think-tanks. It takes its name from the workers’ anthem calling for an equitable democratic society, and references the historical labour movement. In learning from local and shared histories, L’Internationale focuses on what is to come, in imagining, developing and implementing new visions for a future that will be just, democratic and sustainable for everyone, planetwide.

L’Internationale was founded on the initiative of Moderna galerija, Ljubljana. It proposes a space for art within a non-hierarchical and decentralised internationalism, based on the values of difference and horizontal exchange among a constellation of cultural agents – associate organisations from the academic and artistic fields – locally rooted and globally connected. L'Internationale Online is the common platform for research, debate and communication for the confederation.

The ethics of L'Internationale are based on the values of difference and antagonism, solidarity and commonality. It also defends the critical imagination of art as a catalyst for concepts of the civic institution, citizenship and democracy.

L'Internationale represents a new internationalist model for heritage today, challenging traditional notions of exclusiveness, closure and property. It defends a concept of common heritage that is based on interconnected archives and collections, and it brings together those who view legacy as an active tool in the processes of individual and collective emancipation.

„Our Many Europes”

As part of the Creative Europe Culture Programme, the cultural project Our Many Europes, has been implemented and developed in 2018–2022 by L’Internationale and headed, on this occasion, by the Museo Reina Sofía. The Our Many Europes project and its wide-ranging schedule of lectures, exhibitions and education initiatives seek to advocate enhancing visitor-museum engagement and study more innovative forms of participation.

The content of each activity will focus on the 1990s, the dawn of contemporary Europe and a decade which saw a pivotal change take place, from an art perspective, in a society that opened up to the Internet and broadened horizons.

„Museum of the Commons”

Over the coming four years, L’Internationale will implement Museum of the Commons (2023–2026), a project granted €2,000,000 by the EU Creative Europe programme. During this period, the confederation will comprise 14 institutions: Museo Reina Sofía (Spain), MACBA (Spain), M HKA (Belgium), MSN (Poland), Salt (Istanbul, Turkey), Van Abbemuseum (the Netherlands), MSU (Croatia), Haus der Kulturen der Welt (Germany), HDK-Valand (Sweden), NCAD (Ireland), ZRC SAZU (Slovenia), Institute for Radical Imagination (Italy), Tranzit.ro (Romania), the Visual Culture Research Center (Ukraine), and two associate partners, IMMA (Ireland) and WIELS (Belgium), along with the L’Internationale Association.

Museum of the Commons weaves together three transversal thematic threads corresponding to key challenges contemporary societies are facing: 1) Climate; 2) Situated Organisations; and 3) Past in the Present