Muzeum Współczesne, Wrocław

Muzeum Współczesne is Wrocław’s contemporary-art museum, installed in the huge former air-raid shelter on Strzegom Square. Built in 1942 to protect civilians during bombing raids, this is Poland’s only museum housed in an above-ground shelter. Its physical bulk is part of the story: the structure has six reinforced-concrete storeys, outer walls over a metre thick, and a ceiling a metre and a half thick.

Richard Konwiarz designed it. This was the largest of five shelters constructed in Breslau during the nineteen forties. The museum began in 2011, turning a building made for wartime survival into a place for new ideas, exhibitions and public programmes.

Its work centres on recent and progressive art, especially projects connected with Wrocław, while its collection had reached 318 works by Polish and international artists by 2019. The programme follows Jerzy Ludwiński’s belief that conceptual art and social discussion belong together. Nearby, Andrzej Jarodzki’s 2010 installation Pociąg do nieba sends a 1944 Ty2-1035 steam locomotive, rails and sleepers soaring skyward; it is Poland’s largest sculpture.