Being a Director: Joanna Mytkowska

Will the new model for a cultural institution be an outlet in a state of constant formation, uninterrupted transformation and repurposing? How do you manage a museum that is constantly migrating, under construction, shrinking and expanding its space? Joanna Mytkowska, the director of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Warsaw talks about managing an elusive structure.


Olga Wysocka and Igor Stokfiszewski interviewed the directors of Warsaw’s cultural institutions. In 2022, they competed for the position of director of the Warsaw Observatory of Culture. Both Wysocka and Stokfiszewski are aware of the need for change in the cultural sphere and its institutions, a transformation from the old to the new. They have joined forces to discover, drawing on their own experience, how to change institutions, build alliances and create a modern, vibrant and necessary culture. They are also interested in identifying the things that change when you become the director of an institution and when a vision collides with reality.

The WOK.cast series Being a Director was created as part of a partnership between the Warsaw Observatory of Culture and Jasna 10: the Krytyka Polityczna Municipal Cultural Institutions. The interviews took place between October 2023 and April 2024.