The Mousetrap

Aneta Szyłak

Aneta Szyłak has worked as a curator and art critic based in Gdańsk, Poland since 1985. She is a Vice-President of the Wyspa Progress Foundation, a non-profit art organization established in 1994. In 1998 Aneta Szyłak founded the Center for Contemporary Art Łaźnia (Bathhouse) and was its Director until spring 2001. Currently she is a co-founder of the Wyspa Institute of Art – the intellectual environment for contemporary visual culture – in the former Gdańsk Shipyard premises. Her most recent shows include “Dockwatchers” (2005) at Wyspa Institute of Art, “Architectures of Gender” (2005) at SculptureCenter, NYC, “The Palimpsest Museum – 1st Biennale of Polish Art” (2004) in Łódź, and “Health & Safety” (2004) at Wyspa Institute of Art. She has written over a hundred texts about contemporary art, published in catalogues, books, and art magazines in Poland and abroad. She co-edited a book entitled “The Site of Idea. The Idea of Site” (1995) covering the first 10 years of the Gdańsk alternative art scene history. Currently she has been awarded the Jerzy Stajuda Award for “independent and uncompromising curatorial practice” (2005).

dr Andrzej Szczerski

Andrzej Szczerski was born in Kraków in 1971. He is a graduate of the Institute of Art History at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków. Now he works at the same institute as lecturer and head of postgraduate curatorial studies. He also was visiting lecturer at the Art History Institute of the Goethe University Frankfurt on the Main and at the School of Art History, University of St. Andrews, Scotland. Besides, Andrzej Szczerski is one of the members of the advisory board of the Małopolska Foundation Museum of Contemporary Art in Kraków.
His research interests are: Central European Art in the 20th century, British-Central European contacts around 1900, Polish art after 1945, design history, and methodology of art history. He is author of numerous publications in periodicals and exhibition catalogues. He was co-editor of the book “Art in People’s Republic of Poland” (1999). In 2002 there was published his monography „Wzorce tożsamości. Recepcja sztuki brytyjskiej w Europie Środkowej około roku 1900” (Models of Identity. The Reception of British Art in Central Europe around 1900). Andrzej Szczerski was consultant for the exhibition „Der neue Staat. Zwischen Experiment und Repräsentation. Polnische Kunst 1918-1939” (The New Nation. Between Experiment and Representation. Polish Art 1918-1939), Leopold Museum Vienna (2003). 2002-2005 he was curator of the lecture series “Designing Modernity” at the Goethe-Institut and the British Council in Kraków.