Beauty Captured in Amber. The Amber Harvest in Kozłówka

A lump of amber the size of a loaf of bread was turned up by a plough on the Kozłówka estate in 1870, and then lost. A hundred and fifty years later the palace museum builds an exhibition around that absence, setting raw succinite from the Lublin region beside contemporary painting, animation and print.

Zamoyski Museum in Kozłówka on the exhibition (translated from the museum’s Polish text; the museum publishes no English version of this page):

History, art and regional memory meet in Kozłówka. From 22 September the North Annexe will host the exhibition “Beauty Captured in Amber. The Amber Harvest in Kozłówka”, devoted to amber from the Lublin region and to its presence in history, in the landscape and in contemporary art.

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We invite you to Kozłówka for an encounter with amber - a material that preserved traces of an ancient world for millions of years, and today inspires new stories.

What to expect

The show occupies the North Annexe (Oficyna Północna), the building across the courtyard from the palace itself, and runs from 22 September to 30 November 2026; the opening is on 22 September at 13:00. Its starting point is a local event of 1870, when ploughing on the Kozłówka estate turned up a lump of amber the size of a loaf of bread. The find was recorded in an agricultural encyclopaedia published in 1873 and then disappeared, so the exhibition is organised around an object nobody can show you.

Four things worth coming for:

• A lump of amber from the Niedźwiada area - recently mined succinite whose shape echoes the lost Kozłówka “amber loaf”.
• Paintings by Krystyna Rudzka-Przychoda - the core of the display, mixing works shown before with canvases painted for this exhibition.
• An icon of Saint Barbara by Mikołaj Soboliwski - dedicated to the emerging “Lublin Amber Basin”, the patron saint of miners attached to an industry that does not yet exist.
• An animated film by Joanna Polak and digital prints by Agnieszka Sulimierska - the reason this is not simply paintings plus stones in cases.

The exhibition was conceived by the geologist Dr Lucjan Gazda together with Krystyna Rudzka-Przychoda. The museum publishes no object count and no room count, so the scale is unknown; it is one annexe, not a wing of the palace, and 30 to 45 minutes should cover it.

Context

Polish amber is a Baltic brand, but the documented Polish deposits are mostly inland: according to the regional broadcaster RMF24 about 98 percent of the country’s recognised reserves lie in the Lublin region, north of the city around Lubartów and Niedźwiada. The amber is tens of millions of years old and hard to reach, because a layer of hard rock covers the richest seams. That is why the “Lublin Amber Basin” invoked by one of the exhibits is still an intention and a label rather than a working industry.

Krystyna Rudzka-Przychoda and Dr Lucjan Gazda - a painter and a geologist - have been showing this material together for decades, in a long-running cycle of geology-themed exhibitions that has travelled through museums and galleries across the Lublin region. In Kozłówka their theme meets the history of the place: the estate belonged to the Zamoyski family at the time of the find, and the amber was reported in a farming encyclopaedia rather than a cabinet of curiosities. The “harvest” in the title is less of a joke than it looks.

Tickets and time

Read the price list carefully, because this is where visitors get caught. Kozłówka sells a separate ticket for almost every display, and the line “temporary exhibition” refers explicitly to the Teatralnia building (12 PLN standard, 8 PLN reduced, 10 PLN for visitors aged 60+). For the North Annexe the price list names only the multimedia display “Kozłówka on the Timeline” (12/8/10 PLN), an escape room and the free Lapidarium - the amber exhibition is not listed at all, and neither combined pass covers the North Annexe. Ask at the ticket desk which ticket admits you before you pay.

Free Tuesdays do not settle it either: the museum states that free entry applies to the Palace, without booking and with a daily limit, and that “the remaining exhibitions are charged per the price list”. Opening hours differ between buildings. In September and October 2026 the palace and Teatralnia open Tuesday to Friday 10:00-15:00 and Saturday to Sunday 10:00-16:00, then daily 10:00-15:00 from 2 to 29 November. The North Annexe displays have their own line in the timetable: 1 September to 20 December 2026, Tuesday and Wednesday 11:00-19:00, Thursday to Sunday 7:30-15:30. The amber show is not yet named in that timetable, so if it is your reason for the trip, phone ahead. The museum is closed on Mondays and on 1 and 11 November; parking costs 15 PLN per car.

Who it is for: anyone with a weakness for minerals, geology or sideways local history, and anyone who wants a reason to enter the part of Kozłówka that palace visitors walk past. Who should skip it: first-time visitors with three hours to spend. Start with the palace and the Socialist Realism Art Gallery - amber is an addition here, not the reason to make the journey.

English on site: the museum runs an English interface on its website but publishes this exhibition’s text only in Polish, and no English labels or audio guide are stated for the show. Foreign-language guided tours exist for the palace: 400 PLN per group of at least five people, booked in advance, on top of the palace ticket.

Events

• 22 September 2026, 13:00 - opening, North Annexe, Palace and Park Complex in Kozłówka

See also

• Where the Line Becomes a Story… Witold Chomicz 1910-1984 - the other temporary show running at Kozłówka, until 29 November 2026, so one trip covers both.
• Saint Barbara, Pray for Us - in Wieliczka the same patron saint of miners fills a chamber 135 metres underground with more than 120 objects from a Portuguese collection.
• Zamoyski Museum in Kozłówka - the museum profile, with hours, prices and the Socialist Realism Art Gallery that makes this site worth the detour from Lublin.

Museum profile: Zamoyski Museum in Kozłówka .