"Basic Forms" is a series of exhibitions and activities implemented by the MSN and the EFC Foundation from 2021 onwards. Each school year, artworks in different formats are created: instructions, games, scores and objects, which are used in schools, community centres and libraries across the country.

What are 'Primary Forms'?
"Basic Forms" is a cyclical programme aimed at primary school students. It has been carried out by the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw and the EFC Foundation since 2021. During each edition of the programme, new artistic instructions, games, scores, objects are created, which go to schools packed in specially designed boxes. Based on these, artworks and artistic activities are created in the school and exhibitions are arranged. The works are not always material in nature: a number of performances, concerts and happenings have been realised during several editions of the programme. Previous editions of 'Basic Forms' have been dispersed throughout Poland. They have mainly taken place in towns with up to 30,000 inhabitants. In 2024, the programme was also part of the Thailand Art Biennale. "Basic Forms" was incorporated into a project by Filipino artist Poklong Anading at a school library in Chiang Rai, Thailand.
Inspirations and historical references

"Primary Forms" was inspired by the School Prints programme, which originated in the UK just after the Second World War, during the turbulent times of the creation of a new political and social order in Europe. At the time, an identical set of lithographs created by a group of established artists found their way into primary schools and were displayed in classrooms. New works were created by Barbara Jones, Henri Matisse, Henry Moore, John Nash and Pablo Picasso, among others. The exhibition 'Basic Forms' also refers to numerous experiments related to art and education in the 20th and 21st centuries. One point of reference is Marcel Duchamp and his exhibition travelling in a suitcase or the 'Fluxkits', boxes prepared by artists associated with the Fluxus movement, containing scores, models, audio recordings, games, puzzles and stencils, among other things. Another example is Pure Consciousness, a series of exhibitions of works by Japanese conceptualist On Kawara in kindergartens, initiated in 1998. In a pedagogical context and in a children's environment, Kawara's paintings could be used as a teaching tool to support the learning of days of the week and numbers. The 'Elementary Forms' are also inspired by the exercises and methodologies of artists who have undertaken work in schools or established their own educational centres, such as Joseph Beuys, Cornelius Cardew, Jef Geys, Anna Halprin, Oskar Hansen, Asger Jorn, K.G. Subramanyan and many others.
School as exhibition, children as creators

The boxes sent to the schools hold a 'dormant' exhibition that can materialise at any time in a form chosen by the pupils. Activities in the programme follow the rhythm of the school year. Supported by the museum's educators, the teachers work with teams made up of pupils from grades 4 to 8. The essence of the process is to put agency in the hands of the children and to learn from each other in creative action. The time available to the group allows them to experiment, ask questions, 'stretch' their imaginations and prove themselves in new roles (including to the teachers). Teachers involved in the programme take part in training sessions, workshops and outdoor activities. These are designed to adequately prepare them for their work in the project - to familiarise them with contemporary, conceptual art, based on process, action and relationships, not just the production of objects, so that they integrate these activities into their further pedagogical work.

About the exhibition 2024/2025

The school year 2024/2025 is a special one for the 'Primary Forms' programme. Up to now, artworks collected in boxes designed for this purpose (in 2021/2022 by Michal Sikorski, in 2023 by Maciej Siuda) have gone to schools. The school was treated as a museum. Now we are reversing the direction - the works created by the children and they themselves go into the big box that is the new building of the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw. Now the museum is becoming a school. In October 2024, during the opening week of the MSN building, 'Basic Forms' occupied part of the Museum's space - as a place for workshops, meetings, a distributor of artistic instructions, a reading room and an exhibition hall. This was the first exhibition ever realised in the new MSN building! In June 2025, 'Basic Forms' returns to the Museum. Here there will be an exhibition of the new artistic instructions commissioned for the fourth edition of the programme and their implementation by school teams from fourteen localities. The central issue of the 2024/2025 school year is the institution of the museum itself. Together, we will ask ourselves a series of questions about the places that artworks inhabit. In what does a museum resemble a school? Who and how do we distinguish between art and non-art? How do we recognise the 'museum value' of objects? To whom does art belong? Is it wrong not to understand something? What is art used for and by whom?