The ING Polish Art Foundation was established over 20 years ago to support Polish artists and showcase current phenomena in art.
Ever since its early days in the year 2000, the Foundation has been building its collection, compiling post-1999 works by living Polish artists. Today, our collection includes nearly 200 objects – paintings, photographs, drawings, video materials, sculptures and installations – by well-known artists as well as by those of the younger generation, born in the 1980s and 1990s.
The Foundation’s collection is one of the few corporate collections in Poland. Works are displayed on Donor premises in Warsaw and Katowice, with reproductions available online under the Creative Commons licence. Once a year, we organise an exhibition of our collection as well as grant a Foundation Award during the Warsaw Gallery Weekend. We have been co-operating with Zachęta – National Gallery of Art since day one. As part of our popularisation efforts, we frequently loan works from the collection to museums and galleries in Poland and abroad.
The Foundation has launched and implemented a number of artistic and educational projects. Artist: The Professional (Artysta – Zawodowiec) is a programme we have been organising since 2017 with intent to prepare art academy students from across Poland for art market realities, and disseminate information on post-graduation development options. The Foundation also publishes books on contemporary art for adult (Sztuka w naszym wieku – Art in Our Age) and young (Bałwan w lodówce – The Snowman in the Fridge) readers. The collection development and the Foundation’s activities are financed from annual donations by ING companies in Poland, forming part of the firm’s global art patronage programme, important to its corporate culture.