Primary Forms (2025-2026)

What is Primary Forms project?

Primary Forms is a cyclical program for pupils at Polish primary schools. It has been carried out by the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw and the Roman Czernecki Educational Foundation since 2021. In each edition of the program a new set of artistic instructions, games, scores and objects are created and delivered to schools packed in specially designed boxes. These are used at the schools as a base for creation of artworks, art activities and exhibitions. The works are not necessarily tangible; a range of performances, concerts and happenings have been executed during the first few editions. So far, editions of Primary Forms have been spread out across Poland, but mainly in towns with a population below 30,000. In 2024 the program was also part of the Thailand Biennale. Primary Forms was included in a project executed by the Filipino artist Poklong Anading at a school library in Chiang Rai, Thailand.

Inspirations and Historical References

Primary Forms was inspired by the School Prints program launched in the UK immediately after the Second World War, during the turbulent times of forging a new political and social order in Europe. An identical set of lithographs by a group of well-known artists were distributed to primary schools and displayed in classrooms. In the scheme, new works were created by artists such as Barbara Jones, Henri Matisse, Henry Moore, John Nash and Pablo Picasso. The Primary Forms program also alludes to numerous other experiments connected with art and education in the 20th and 21st centuries. One point of reference is Marcel Duchamp and his travelling “museum in a suitcase,” or “Fluxkits ”—boxes prepared by artists affiliated with the Fluxus movement, containing scores, models, audio recordings, games, puzzles and stencils. Another example is Pure Consciousness, a series of exhibitions begun at preschools in 1998 of works by the Japanese conceptual artist On Kawara. In the educational context and in the company of children, Kawara’s paintings were used as a teaching instrument helping children learn numbers and the days of the week. Primary Forms is also inspired by the exercises and methodologies of artists who worked in schools or established their own educational institutions, such as Joseph Beuys, Cornelius Cardew, Jef Geys, Anna Halprin, Oskar Hansen, Asger Jorn, K.G. Subramanyan, and many others.

The School as Exhibition, Children as Creators

The boxes distributed to the schools contain within themselves a “dormant exhibition,” which can be materialized in the form chosen by the pupils. The activities in the program play out in the rhythm of the school year. Teachers, with the support of museum educators, work with teams of pupils from grades 4 through 8. The essence of the process is to place agency in the children’s hands and for them to learn from one another within the creative activity. The group has time for experiments, asking questions, stretching their imagination, and testing themselves in new roles (for the teachers as well). The teachers involved in the program take part in training, workshops and plein-air sessions, to prepare them for work in the project—to familiarize them with contemporary, conceptual art based on process, actions and relationships, not only on creating objects, so that they can integrate these activities into their future work as teachers.

What Can an Exhibition Be?

The exhibitions which are the fruits of the teams’ efforts are created within school spaces—in classrooms and corridors, in the gymnasium or the playground. They can be performed numerous times and interpreted in various ways, much like playing a musical score. Through the Primary Forms program, we pose questions like: What can we do with art? What can be an exhibition? Where and when does an exhibition start and end? What can we learn from artists? Does contact with art give rise to knowledge? How to understand art—and also enjoy not understanding it?