On the Way to the Academy

Put together by the Museum of the Chełm Land and the State Academy of Applied Sciences, this display follows one address: 54 Pocztowa Street. It traces the succession of schools housed there. You can see it at 55 Lubelska Street from 18 September to 30 October 2026. The museum’s own words below are translated from its Polish-language page; there is no English version of it.

Museum of the Chełm Land on the exhibition:

On 18 September 2026 at 17:00, at the Museum of the Chełm Land at 55 Lubelska Street, the exhibition “On the Way to the Academy” will open, prepared in cooperation with the State Academy of Applied Sciences in Chełm.

The display is devoted to the history of the building at 54 Pocztowa Street - a place well known to many generations of Chełm’s residents. For decades the building played an important role in the city’s educational life, changing along with the needs of successive generations of pupils, teachers, students and lecturers. Today it is the seat of the State Academy of Applied Sciences in Chełm and an important element of the city’s academic landscape.

The exhibition shows the history of the building from its beginnings to the present day. Thanks to archive photographs, documents and historical material, visitors will be able to follow the successive stages of its functioning and to learn about the people who, over the years, made the history of this place.

“On the Way to the Academy” is not only a story about architecture and an institution, but above all about the community bound up with education - about memory, experiences and the changes that took place in Chełm over the years. The exhibition is an invitation to a shared journey through the history of one of the most recognisable school buildings in the city.

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What to expect

This is a documentary display, not an art show: archive photographs, documents and historical material hung in the rooms of the museum’s main building at 55 Lubelska Street. There are no objects in cases and no reconstructed interiors - just the story of one building and of the people who passed through it.

The State Academy of Applied Sciences in Chełm names the authors. Magdalena Mąka and Zbigniew Lubaszewski worked for the museum; Zygmunt Gardziński, director of the rector’s office, and Aneta Szostak from the promotion department worked for the university. The academy has also announced an album, “On the Way to the Academy”, documenting the building’s history and 25 years of the institution’s work.

Allow 30-40 minutes. For a foreign visitor with no tie to Chełm this is a supplement, not a reason for a trip of its own - see it while you are in the building for Galeria 72 upstairs. For anyone tracing how a provincial Polish city built its schools, it is the more interesting half of the visit.

Context

The building at 54 Pocztowa Street has served education for more than 130 years, as the State Academy of Applied Sciences sums up its history. Older residents remember it above all as the mechanical technical school. Today it houses a university, which is the arc the exhibition closes: from a trade school to an academy.

The show also marks an anniversary - the academy ties it to 25 years of its own work and to the album it has announced about that period. The museum carries the city’s history beyond this display as well: its History Department sits one building along, at 57 Lubelska Street. And if you want Chełm architecture with an even longer biography, you are standing in it. The building at 55 Lubelska Street is the former Piarist monastery of 1667-1726, adjoining the late baroque church of the Dispersion of the Apostles.

Tickets and time

The opening on 18 September 2026 was free; on ordinary days the museum’s standard price list applies, and it covers permanent and temporary exhibitions together. A single-building ticket is 20 PLN full price, 15 PLN reduced; a pass to all four buildings is 40 PLN and 30 PLN. With the municipal “Karta Chełmianina” or “Chełmska Karta 3+” card you pay 15 PLN and 10 PLN per building, or 25 PLN and 15 PLN for the pass; children under 7 enter free.

Admission is free every Thursday - if this exhibition is your only reason to come to Chełm, come on a Thursday. Hours are Tuesday to Friday 10:00-16:00 (10 AM to 4 PM), Saturday and Sunday 12:00-16:00, closed Monday, last entry 15:30. The building on Lubelska Street opens normally on Saturdays, unlike the branch at 4 Świętego Mikołaja Street, closed every Saturday since 5 September 2026.

The museum gives 30 October 2026 as the closing date on its temporary-exhibition listing; the exhibition’s own page says only “the end of October”, and the university repeats that wording. If you are planning a visit in the final week, confirm by phone on +48 82 565 26 93.

English on site: the museum has no English-language website and states no English labels, audio guide or English-language tours for this exhibition. Since the material is archive documents and captions, a visitor without Polish will get the photographs and little else.

Events

• 18 September 2026, 17:00 - opening at the Museum of the Chełm Land, 55 Lubelska Street, free admission (already held)

What the press says

Two previews, both informative, neither judging the display.

Super Tydzień Chełmski (17 September 2026, Monika Łubkowska): describes the show as a journey in time through the building’s successive uses, and a return to their own memories for former pupils - article, in Polish .

State Academy of Applied Sciences in Chełm (19 September 2026): the co-organiser’s report from the opening, listing the authors of the display and announcing the album on the building’s history - report, in Polish .

See also

• Museum of the Chełm Land profile - four buildings, hours, prices and the permanent history displays.
• Rays of the South. Lights of the Borderlands - a painting show in the same building on Lubelska Street, covered by the same ticket.
• Windows of Memory - Chełm’s other display about the memory of a place, free and outdoors.

Museum profile: Wiktor Ambroziewicz Museum of the Chełm Land .