About us

Zachęta is a place,
where the most interesting phenomena of 20th and 21st century art are presented

Zachęta – National Gallery of Art is an institution whose mission is to popularise contemporary art as an important element of socio-cultural life. A place where the most interesting phenomena of 20th and 21st century art are presented.

The gallery stages temporary exhibitions. Among the outstanding Polish and foreign artists whose works have been shown in its historical, over 100 years old interiors are Marlene Dumas, Luc Tuymans, Jan Lebenstein, Zbigniew Libera, Tadeusz Kantor, Katarzyna Kozyra, Koji Kamoji, Susan Mogul, Yayoi Kusama, Wilhelm Sasnal or Wolfgang Tillmans. Zachęta also holds widely discussed problem exhibitions such as „From The Ashes”, „Does the rising sun affright” czy The discomfort of evening”. The gallery presents the works of young artists. Their works can be seen also at the Zachęta Project Room, a space-laboratory that is a stage for artistic experiments.

The gallery conducts educational activities addressed to children and young people, as well as to adult public. It also organizes a series of accessible events, i.e. attentive to the diversity of recipients' needs. It publishes books aboout art and gathers information on contemporary Polish artistic life.

Zachęta has an impressive collection, which consists of almost 3700 works in the field of painting, sculpture, installation, video, graphics and performance.

For over 70 years, Zachęta's task has been to supervise and organize exhibitions in the Polish Pavilion in Venice at the Art Biennale and the Architecture Biennale — one of the most important art reviews in the world. During the 60th edition of the Venice Biennale, gallery presents the project Repeat After Me II by the Open Group collective and curator Marta Czyż.

One of the essential aspects of Zachęta’s community mission is popularising contemporary art by facilitating access to it to various groups and communities. Reproductions of works from the Zachęta collection, documentations, educational materials and the majority of our publications can be accessed on Creative Commons licences at our website. This is part of the Open Zachęta open-policy project, launched in 2011

Do you have any question about Zachęta and our exhibitions?
You don't know who to ask? We are here to help!

If you are interested in our collection, loans or photographs of our artworks: j.puzynska@zacheta.art.pl,

If you are interested in our library or exhibition archives:  (documentation), , (library)

If you are interested in renting the gallery for special events:

Statute of Zachęta

Download Statute (pdf)

Information about Zahcęta i Polish Sign Language

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  • Grafika obiektu: Photos of Zachęta
    mediateka / photo gallery
    Photos of Zachęta