The Polish Cultural Institute New York, established in 2000, is a diplomatic mission to the United States serving under the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Poland.
The Institute’s mission is to build, nurture and promote cultural ties between the United States and Poland by presenting Polish culture to American audiences and by connecting Polish artists and scholars to American institutions, introducing them to their professional counterparts in the United States, and facilitating their participation in contemporary American culture.
The Institute has been producing and promoting a broad range of cultural events in theater, music, film, literature, the humanities, and visual arts. Among its American partners are such distinguished organizations as Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts; Brooklyn Academy of Music; The Museum of Modern Art; The Jewish Museum; The PEN American Center; The Poetry Society of America; National Gallery of Art; Yale University; Columbia University; Princeton University; Harvard Film Archive; CUNY Graduate Center; Julliard School of Music; The New Museum; La MaMa E.T.C.; and many more. Our programs have included American presentations of works by such luminaries as filmmakers Roman Polanski, Andrzej Wajda and Jerzy Skolimowski; writers Czeslaw Milosz, Adam Zagajewski and Wislawa Szymborska; composers Krzysztof Penderecki, Witold Lutoslawski and Mikolaj Gorecki; theatre directors Krystian Lupa, Jerzy Grotowski, Tadeusz Kantor and Grzegorz Jarzyna; visual artists Krzysztof Wodiczko, Katarzyna Kozyra, Artur Zmijewski; and many other important artists, writers, historians, scholars, musicians, and performers.
Jerzy Onuch is a contemporary artist, curator, and arts administrator. He received his MFA from the the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts in 1979, specializing in painting, graphics and art education. As an artist he matured in Poland in the early 1980s, a period of artistic freedom, vitality, and opportunity unique in postwar Eastern Europe.
Mr. Onuch began to take part in solo and group shows in 1976, and in 1980 he became co-director and curator of the Warsaw Academy’s Dziekanka Gallery, devoted to innovative and experimental programs. As a curator he co-organized over 70 exhibitions and events between 1980 and 1986. The Dziekanka Gallery, which he helped run with Janusz Baldyga, Lukasz Szajna and Tomasz Sikorski, was highly progressive and naturally politically charged as it was born during the rise of the pro-democratic Solidarity movement.
In 1987, after spending one year in the United States, Mr. Onuch settled in Toronto, Canada, continuing to work in performance art and installation, curating and teaching.
Mr. Onuch served from 1997-2005 as Director of the Center for Contemporary Art (CCA) in Kyiv, Ukraine (formerly the George Soros Centre for Contemporary Arts). During his tenure the Center presented many Ukrainian and International artists including: Andy Warhol, Joseph Beuys, Nam June Paik, Ilya Kabakov, Joseph Kosuth, Tony Ousler, Leon Tarasewicz, Arsen Savadov, Taras Polataiko, Boris Mikhailov, Serhiy Bratkov, Illya Chichkan, Andrij Sahaidakovskyi, Masoch Fund, Oleg Kulik and others. During the "Orange Revolution" the CCA became a political center for young artist-activists (now called REP) who used the center's premises for the creation of "revolutionary art". During this period Mr. Onuch was also a public and at times a political force, often treated by friends, colleagues and competitors as a moral authority on the development and state of the arts and culture in post-communist Ukraine.
In February 2003, Korrespondent magazine (similar to Time or Newsweek) named Mr. Onuch as one of the 10 most influential foreign citizens working in Ukraine. In 2005 Mr. Onuch joined the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs and served as a I Counsellor to the Embassy of the Republic of Poland in Ukraine and Director of the Polish Cultural Institute in Kyiv through 2010.
Bartek Remisko – Deputy Director Bartek Remisko has been Deputy Director of the Institute since September 2011.
He graduated in Applied Linguistics (English and French) from Warsaw University in 2000, and in 2003 completed his MA in International Economic and Political Relations at the Warsaw School of Economics and IEP Sciences-Po, Paris. Later on he completed postgraduate programs in Arts Management and Administration (2005) and in Cultural Economics and Politics (2006), both at Universite Paris VIII. In 2009 he completed his Masters degree in Curating Contemporary Art from Jagiellonian University in Cracow, and in 2011 a Cultural Diplomacy program. Between 1997 and 2003 Mr. Remisko worked in various foreign diplomatic missions in Warsaw as a Polish Language Instructor. In 2001 he interned in the Permanent Mission of the Republic of Poland to UNESCO in Paris, and at the UN in New York. In 2005-06 Mr. Remisko worked in the Pompidou Center in Paris, and in 2006-07 in the European Commission (Education and Culture Directorate) and in the European Parliament (Parliamentary Committee on Culture), both in Brussels. From 2007–11 he worked as an Expert in Corporate Social Responsability and Diversity Managament in the TP-Orange Group in Warsaw, Poland, the largest telecommunications company in Central and Eastern Europe, part of the worldwide France Telecom-Orange Group.
Anna Perzanowska has been Music Programmer at the Institute since January 2007.
Anna Perzanowska is currently pursuing her Master’s Degree in ethnomusicology at the City University of New York at Hunter College. Music has been her passion since her very early years; she began her music education at the age of five at the Fryderyk Chopin Elementary Music School in Warsaw. After immigrating to New York at the age of 14, she continued her studies at the LaGuardia High School of Music, Art and Performing Arts. Upon attending music classes at Hunter College, Anna graduated from Baruch College with a Bachelor of Business Administration in Marketing in 2003. In order to combine her interests, Anna worked with numerous New York institutions and musicians in preparation of concerts and various cultural events.
Marzena Dawidziuk has been Project Coordinator since October 2012, having previously worked as Assistant to the Director of the Institute.
She earned a Master’s Degree in American Studies from Maria Curie-Sklodowska University in Lublin. A foreign languages enthusiast, she worked as a Polish/English business and legal translator for several years before joining the Polish Cultural Institute. Upon immigrating to New York in 2008, she has continued her education at NYU School of Continuing and Professional Studies, where she completed her Certificate in Global Affairs.
David Goldfarb – Literature Programming David A. Goldfarb has been Literature Curator at the Institute since June 2010.
He holds a doctorate in Comparative Literature from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. He has published articles on Bruno Schulz, Zbigniew Herbert, Stanislaw Ignacy Witkiewicz, Mikhail Lermontov, and East European cinema in East European Politics and Societies, Indiana Slavic Studies, Philosophy and Literature, Prooftexts, The Polish Review, Slavic and East European Performance, and book chapters on Jozef Wittlin, Witold Gombrowicz, and Nikolai Gogol. He has written the introduction and notes for Tolstoy's "The Death of Ivan Ilych" and Other Stories and Turgenev's Fathers and Sons for the Barnes and Noble Classics series, and for the Penguin Classics edition of the The Street of Crocodiles and Other Stories by Bruno Schulz. He is working on two book projects, one on the fiction of the Marquis de Sade and Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, and one on Bruno Schulz.
Paulina Bebecka has been Associate Curator at the Institute since September 2011.
Paulina holds a Master of Arts in Contemporary Art from the Sotheby’s Institute of Art in London and a Bachelor of Arts in Economics and a Bachelor of Arts in International Business Administration, both from the American University of Paris. She has worked in the field of contemporary art in New York, Paris and London. At the moment she divides her time between the Polish Cultural Institute and Postmasters Gallery. The several shows she curated at Postmasters have been reviewed by various arts publications including the New York Times Magazine . She has worked with various artists like Mika Rottenberg and Natalie Jeremijenko. Martyna S. Sowa – Assistant to the Director
Martyna S. Sowa has been Assistant to the Director of the Institute since October 2012.
Martyna holds a Bachelor’s Degree from Columbia University in East Central European Studies. Before she immigrated to the United States in 2002, she studied Fine Arts at Stanislaw Wyspianski Fine Arts High School in Poland after graduating from Fryderyk Chopin Music School majoring in Flute Performance. At Columbia, Martyna was a member of the Polish Student Society and focused in her studies on Eastern European culture, history, arts, politics, and international relations. Kamila Slawinska – Communication Manager
Kamila Slawinska has been Communication Manager at the Institute since September 2011.
She studied Art History at Warsaw University and worked at the Centre for Contemporary Art, Ujazdowski Castle, one of Poland’s leading institutions for the presentation and promotion of contemporary art. In 1998, she moved to New York and began a career in creative services, working as a publications and communications specialist, production artist, and as a freelance interpreter and translator. She is also a journalist and writer and has been writing on film, arts, music and culture for many leading Polish papers. Her writing has been featured in Film, Cinema, Swiat Filmu, Tygodnik Powszechny, Polityka, Przekroj and many other leading periodicals. She was also a freelance contributor to the Polish National Radio’s online service. Her book Nowy Jork. Przewodnik niepraktyczny (New York: An Unpractical Guide), a collection of essays on everyday life and culture in New York City, originally published by W.A.B. Publishers in 2008, is now in its 2nd edition. Iwona Kaczmarek – Chief Administrative Officer
Iwona Kaczmarek has been Chief Administrative Officer at the Polish Cultural Institute New York since August 2012.
She earned her bachelor’s degree in Marketing Management from the University of Communications and Management in Poznan and completed an Advanced Diploma in Business Management at Kaplan Aspect Schools in Sydney, Australia. Prior to her arrival in New York she spent four years in Australia as a consular officer at The Consulate General of The Republic of Poland in Sydney.
