WARSAW, Poland (AP) — A modern art museum designed by American architect Thomas Phifer opens its doors in the Polish capital Friday — a minimalist, light-filled structure that is meant to be a symbol of openness and tolerance as the city tries to free itself from its communist legacy. The Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw sits like a bright white box on a major city street. Inside, a monumental staircase with geometric lines rises to upper floors, where large windows flood the gallery rooms with light.
City and museum officials say the light and open spaces are meant to attract meetings and debate — and become a symbol of the democratic era that Poland embraced when it threw off authoritarian communist rule 35 years ago. Warsaw Mayor Rafał Trzaskowski said the museum's opening is a “historic moment for Warsaw" and that the project, which will later include a theater, will help to create a new city center no longer dominated by a communist symbol. “This place will change beyond recognition, it will be a completely new center,” he said Thursday.
“There has not been a place like this in Warsaw for decades, a place that would be created from scratch precisely to promote Polish art, which is spectacular in itself." Warsaw was turned to rubble by occupying German forces during World War II and was rebuilt in the gray, sometimes drab, style of communist regimes across Eastern Europe. But years of economic growth in the post-communist era have produced modern glass archit.