A phenomenon unique to the history of contemporary art in east central Europe is the so-called authors’ galleries, also referred to by other equally inadequate terms, such as independent, private, experimental, and laboratory galleries. In Poland this phenomenon proliferated, and only recently has serious research begun to address the history of these spaces and their contributions to the development of contemporary art both globally and locally. Galeria Wschodnia. Documents 1984–2017, published in 2019 by the Muzeum Sztuki w Łodzi (Art Museum of Lodz) is an impressive example of such research, carried out on one particular author's gallery, Galeria Wschodnia in Łódź, which has been operational since 1984.

The book is an extraordinary production of interpretive essays, photographs and other documents that together comprise the history of the space. Most notable is the 200-page essay by art historian Tomasz Załuski, which offers a thorough and detailed history of the gallery from its pre-history to the present day. In order to compile this text, the author spoke with numerous individuals involved in the gallery since the 1980s, as well as consulting documents and archives, and the result is a an exhaustive and multi-faceted history of the venue and its activities, told from numerous perspectives. Where disagreements or conflicting memories paint two different pictures of the history of the gallery, Załuski includes both recollections, demonstrating the flawed nature of memory and the fact that history is always an imperfect reconstruction.

Following this comprehensive essay, various authors engage in noteworthy and unique explorations of the space, place, and time of Wschodnia. Curator Daniel Muzyczuk's essay “Deliberations on Economics Cooked up in the Back Room—Phase Two” presents a spatial exploration of Wschodnia, providing the reader with a walking tour of an exhibition on Wschodnia that took place at Muzeum Sztuki in Łódź in 2014, on the thirtieth anniversary of the gallery's foundation. The tour takes place not just through space but also time, as the author discusses various performances and events in the gallery's history that were featured in the exhibition. Like Załuski, Muzyczuk presents the history of the gallery as a complex interweaving of time, events, spaces, and people, which change with perspective and memory.

Adding a further layer of complexity to Galeria Wschodnia is the text by Mikołaj Iwański, an economist, and Jakub de Barbaro, who has an MA in visual communication. Together they present an economic and statistical representation of the gallery, combining text and visual images in the form of graphs and charts to analyze the financial liquidity, legality of activity, noticeability of the programs, and levels of optimism through the years, among other elements. It is an ambitious attempt to quantify that which is often considered unquantifiable. The essay is a conceptual project that recalls the ideas that Benjamin Buchloh laid out in his 1989 essay, “Conceptual Art 1962–1969: From the Aesthetics of Administration to the Critique of Institutions,” where he describes the conceptual artist as an “employee who catalogues.” Here, the authors of this essay catalogue the quantitative information about the history of the gallery, analyzing those additional elements as having contributed to its qualitative achievements.

Among the most interesting sections of the book is one containing excerpts from historical documents and essays about Wschodnia. These contemporaneous accounts of exhibitions at the gallery provide a unique first-hand perspective on these events. In providing these brief glimpses into the past, published between 1995 and 2011, the book manages to once again bridge the gap between the present day and the past.

The book concludes with a chunky representation of the Archive of Galeria Wschodnia, laid out chronologically, from 1984–1917, replete with photographs of exhibitions, exhibition openings, illustrations of artworks and prints, and events that took place during its more than thirty-year history. These images are compelling on their own, but could have benefited from some additional description or contextualization. The same goes for the Timeline of Events that follows, which is an important list to have but does not speak to the reader on its own. The book also would have benefited from a wider contextualization of the gallery, in terms of both the Polish art scene and the wider context of contemporary art.

That said, this is the first substantial publication to bring to light the complexity and density of the history of Galeria Wschodnia and will no doubt serve as a valuable springboard for future research on this important place in the history of contemporary art.