WARSAW – Poland’s capital on Friday opens a modern art museum, a minimalist, light-filled structure designed by American architect Thomas Phifer that is intended to be a symbol of openness and tolerance as the city tries to rid itself of its communist legacy.

The Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw stands like a shiny white box on a major street of the city. Inside, a monumental staircase with geometric lines leads to the upper floors, where large windows fill the gallery rooms with light.

City and museum officials say the bright, open spaces are intended to attract meetings and discussions and become a symbol of the democratic era Poland embraced when it broke away from authoritarian communist rule 35 years ago.

Warsaw Mayor Rafał Trzaskowski said the opening of the museum was “a historic moment for Warsaw” and that the project, which would later include a theatre, would help create a new city center no longer dominated by the communist symbol.

“This place will change beyond recognition, it will be a completely new center,” he said Thursday. “There hasn’t been a place like this in Warsaw for decades; a place to be created from scratch to promote Polish art, which is amazing in its own right.”

Warsaw was reduced to ruins by occupying German forces during World War II and rebuilt in the gray, sometimes drab style of communist regimes in Eastern Europe. But years of economic growth in the post-communist era have resulted in modern glass architecture, state-of-the-art museums and revitalized historic buildings.

The museum was built on a former parking lot near the Palace of Culture and Science, a dominating Stalinist skyscraper. Again long hated Seen by many as a symbol of Moscow’s oppression, this ostentatious palace remains a symbol of the city today; In fact, it is perhaps the most well-known building in the city.

The museum responds with its bright white minimalism and smaller scale.

“It is very important that this building is located opposite the Palace of Culture and Science and symbolically changes the centre,” said museum director Joanna Mytkowska. “This is a building dedicated to an open, equal and democratic culture.”

American and other Western architects leave their mark on the city. The city skyline includes a towering luxury tower created by Daniel Libeskindfamous Polish American architect. British designer Norman Foster’s firm created the Varso Tower, the tallest skyscraper in the European Union at 310 meters (1,017 feet). A Finnish architectural team designed the city’s iconic Jewish history museum.

Phifer’s New York-based work has been exhibited in the United States at the North Carolina Museum of Art, the Corning Museum of Glass, and Glenstone Museum expansion In Potomac, Maryland.

When asked by a reporter whether he considered the Warsaw Museum his masterpiece, the 71-year-old artist answered without hesitation. “Of course,” he said.

He said he was aware from the moment he started working at the museum 10 years ago that his work was part of Warsaw’s “extraordinary renaissance”.

The city financed the project for 700,000 million zlotys ($175 million). Only a few works of art are on display for now, but eventually there will be up to 2,500 exhibitions, including works by top international artists. Its full opening is planned for February, but the building’s opening program It features weeks of performances and other events starting Friday.

The area around it is still under construction and will eventually become what the architect calls a “forum space,” which includes a garden and a black-facade theater also designed by Phifer.

Not everyone likes the new museum’s austerity, and some residents liken it to a concrete bunker.

Phifer said he believes critics will feel differently when they enter the building and see its design and how the white background provides space for the art to “come to life.”

“The museum is what I call the magic box. “There’s a bit of mystery to it,” he said. “You don’t really understand this work until you come in and experience it through the art.”

Mayor Trzaskowski said that all ambitious architectural projects are sure to stir emotions.

“Every major project built from scratch in the world, such as the Pompidou Center in Paris, the Guggenheim in Bilbao or the pyramid in the Louvre, has sparked controversy,” Trzaskowski said. He added that real debates will only arise when the avant-garde begins to organize museum exhibitions.