Tender Museum

"Tenderness, understood as an act of defiance introduces a possibility of freeing oneself from the constraints of any system. My Tender Museum (2009) project developed in collaboration with Muzeum Sztuki in Lodz, proposed a discursive space, where questions of gender, care, and attention were articulated by re-positioning a voice of one individual. By researching and recovering the figure of Urszula Czartoryska (1934-1998), a critic, curator and wife of the Muzeum Sztuki prominent director Ryszard Stanisławski (1921-2000), a different picture emerges as to the role she played in shaping the museum’s programme. My work speculates on the relationship between distinct spheres of the private and public, testing their boundaries and finding the leaks while exploring the acts of generosity associated with the foundation of every museum."

Lewandowska is a Polish-born artist based in London. Through a research-focused practice she has been exploring the public function of museums, exhibitions and archives. Her project Tender Museum was shown at the Muzeum Sztuki in Łódź in 2009, the same year she established the Women’s Audio Archive. The film Rehearsing the Museum made in 2018 in Shanghai is a sequel to Museum Futures celebrating Moderna Museet’s Jubilee in 2008. It’s About Time installation commissioned for the V&A Museum Pavilion was presented at the 58th Venice Biennale. The Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw included Enthusiasts Archive in their collection in 2019. Since 2020 she has been collaborating with Kunsthalle Baden Baden on Institutional Healing. Her latest film Dismantling the Faculty of Law was part of the 11th Gothenburg Biennial GIBCA in 2021. She is currently Artist-in Residence hosted by the Jencks Foundation at the Cosmic House in London.

The lecture will be in English.