The Zachęta Gallery takes its name from Towarzystwo Zachęty do Sztuk Pięknych (Society for the Encouragement of the Fine Arts), founded in Warsaw in 1860.

The Society hosted annual salons, funded scholarships and offered other aid to young artists, both members and candidates.

The resulting monumental perspective is emphasized by the Gladiator, a work by the Polish sculptor, Pius Weloński, which remained from the Society's former collection.

The extension of the building created a larger exhibition space, a storage facility for the artwork, an unloading platform and an office wing with a separate entrance.

To commemorate the president and Wojciech Gerson, one of the founders of the Society for the Encouragement of Fine Arts, two plaques were revealed during the gallery's anniversary celebrations in 2000.

During the Warsaw Uprising the Zachęta building was heavily damaged by artillery and bombs and thus needed to be fully renovated at the end of the war.

Traces of a flammable substance were found, suggesting that German units planned to set the building on fire before their withdrawal.

Branch offices were opened in Kraków, Katowice, Poznań, Łódź, Zakopane, Gdańsk, Szczecin, Wrocław, Olsztyn and Opole.

The 1980s were characterized by radical political changes related to the declaration of martial law, leading to a boycott of all official galleries.

In the same year, the gallery opened the exhibition Słońce i inne Gwiazdy (The Sun and other Stars) based on a survey taken in 1999.

The survey was directed primarily to Polish art historians, critics and curators, and asked for the most important artists of the 20th century.

Słońce i inne Gwiazdy exhibited ten of the elected Polish artists: Magdalena Abakanowicz, Tadeusz Kantor, Katarzyna Kobro, Roman Opałka, Henryk Stażewski, Władysław Strzemiński, Alina Szapocznikow, Witkacy, Witold Wojtkiewicz and Andrzej Wróblewski.

Also in 2000, the ten most important foreign artists were presented in another exhibit and consisted of Pablo Picasso, Francis Bacon, Joseph Beuys, Marcel Duchamp, Wassily Kandinsky, Andy Warhol, Kazimir Malevich, Salvador Dalí, Piet Mondrian and Constantin Brâncuși.

In 2000, the Swiss art historian, Harald Szeemann, curated an exhibition featuring Maurizio Cattelans, La Nona Ora (The ninth Hour).

The permanent collection of Zachęta National Gallery of Art today comprises 3600 objects of which about 700 are paintings, almost 80 are video works and around 100 are sculptures and installations.

The gallery also runs a separate Pedagogy Department which is responsible for the organisation of lectures, meetings and talks with artists and art historians, concerts, guided tours as well as educational programmes.

The Kordegarda Gallery (literally: guardroom) was founded in 1956 as a branch of the Zachęta and situated on Krakowskie Przedmieście in Warsaw.

While still directed by the Zachęta, the Kordegarda Gallery became more independent, devoting its attention to young artists, both Polish and foreign.

[citation needed] In December 2000, the Polish right-wing politician Witold Tomczak damaged Maurizio Cattelan's sculpture, La Nona Ora, and prompted the dismissal of director, Anda Rottenberg.

In a letter addressed to the prime minister, Tomczak denounced Rottenberg, suggested that she should curate "rather in Israel than in Poland", and then demanded the dismissal of the "civil servant of Jewish origin".