Batikara. The Fantastic Józefa Kogut

From 21 November 2025 to 20 September 2026, the Ethnographic Museum in Krakow showed nearly 200 works by Józefa Kogut (1902-1979) in the cellars of Esterka House - batiks on fabric and wood and ornaments on paper, alongside the artist’s photographs, sketches and letters.

Ethnographic Museum in Krakow on the exhibition:

A collection of beautiful and unique items: works of art evoking the history of Polish design, samplers, paintings, sketches and a selection of documents confirming successes and crises in life. This is the legacy of Józefa Kogut. It was entrusted to the Ethnographic Museum in Krakow by her sister Zofia, two years after the artist’s death, in 1980.

As befits a legacy, this incredible collection is also a hotchpotch of understatements, repetitions, mistakes, conjectures and crumbs of information - sometimes contradicting each other.

Years later, it is difficult to establish even which of the two sisters created the particular works. Józefa and Zofia both learned the batik technique at the Krakow Workshops, lived together all their lives and supported each other. Perhaps they also shared work to be done? And helped each other out by doing the other’s work with deadlines approaching?

And yet, with this exhibition, we are commemorating, first and foremost, Józefa Kogut. We have followed her story, gleaned from personal and official letters, newspaper clippings, keepsakes and albums that she kept. And, last but not least, from her fabulous works and sketches that reveal the amazing power of her imagination.

What to expect

The exhibition included installations by contemporary artists - Kinga Klisz, Igor Kłaczyński, Elina Pyrohova and Ewa Woźniak - designed as an interactive space for viewing, experiencing and creating. It was housed at Esterka House, ul. Krakowska 46, a branch of the Ethnographic Museum in Krakow. The museum’s own framing was hands-on: “Come in; look; listen; touch; play; act.” - visitors got an exhibition sketchbook and marked interaction points rather than just display cases, and the show carried the museum’s Polish sign language and audio-description accessibility features.

The museum’s description of the show and its full list of contributors remain on the Ethnographic Museum in Krakow website .

Context

Józefa Kogut entered art through the Krakow Workshops (Warsztaty Krakowskie), one of the leading Polish design circles of the early twentieth century, where the batik studio run by Antoni Buszek - modelled on Paul Poiret’s Paris studio École Martine - put teenagers in charge of inventing new decorative patterns. Batik, a wax-resist textile dyeing technique that originated in Java, became through Buszek’s workshop a language of Polish decorative art in the 1920s. At the 1925 International Exhibition of Decorative Arts in Paris - the same exhibition that gave Art Deco its name - Józefa and her sister Zofia both won the Grand Prix for batiks on fabric, and Józefa also took a medal for batik on wood. After the war her work was sold through Cepelia shops as far afield as Brussels and New York.

Tickets and time

A ticket for the temporary exhibition at Esterka House cost 20 PLN full price, 15 PLN reduced; on Tuesdays it dropped to 15 PLN full, 10 PLN reduced. A combined ticket that added the permanent exhibition at the Ethnographic Museum’s town-hall building cost 35 PLN (23 PLN reduced). Children under 7, group guardians and disability assistants entered free. The show was interactive and multi-sensory, so it needed at least an hour - more than a quick walk past display cases; it worked best for visitors with children and anyone who likes handling exhibits, less well for a fast, quiet visit.

What the press says

label-magazine.com (12.05.2026, MG): praises Kogut’s lifelong creative consistency and the range of nearly 200 works on show, from textiles to sketches and letters - link .

dzieje.pl (20.11.2025, PAP): frames the exhibition as the first public showing of Kogut’s full legacy, timed to the 100th anniversary of her 1925 Paris triumph - link .

Updates

The opening took place on 20 November 2025 at the town hall on Plac Wolnica, after which guests walked over to Esterka House. On 5-8 March 2026 the museum ran a “Józefa Kogut’s Birthday” programme - a talk on sisterhood and women’s history, a batik workshop, family activities and a detective walk; both events have already taken place. On 4 February 2026 the museum announced that the exhibition had received the Radio Krakow Brand (Marka Radia Kraków), the first such distinction awarded in 2026 (source ).

• 2026-09-22 - first announced to run until the end of August 2026 (museum news of 4 February 2026 ), the exhibition was extended to 20 September 2026 (exhibition page ) and closed on that date.

See also

• Ethnographic Museum - the permanent exhibition at the Kazimierz town hall, a few steps from Esterka House and covered by the combined ticket.
• Old Synagogue - on the other side of Kazimierz, on the culture of Krakow’s Jews, a good complement to the district’s history.

After the show

“Batikara. The Fantastic Józefa Kogut”, first announced to run until the end of August, was extended and closed on 20 September 2026. The museum says nothing about the show travelling to another city, and its list of temporary exhibitions does not yet announce the next show at Esterka House.

What remains is Dorota Majkowska-Szajer’s book “Fantastyczne siostry Kogut: Józefa, Maria i Zofia” (The Fantastic Kogut Sisters: Józefa, Maria and Zofia; Ethnographic Museum in Krakow, 2026, ISBN 978-83-61369-63-9), published alongside the exhibition with text in Polish and English. It costs 137 PLN in the Ethnographic Museum’s online shop - if you missed the show, it covers the same collection of the Kogut sisters’ work.

Polish press coverage framed the exhibition as the first full showing of Kogut’s legacy, timed to the centenary of her 1925 Paris success (dzieje.pl, PAP). The site label-magazine.com stressed the artist’s consistency and the range of nearly 200 works on show, from textiles to sketches and letters. The one award was the Radio Krakow Brand; the museum has published no attendance figures.

If you are in Kazimierz anyway, the museum’s permanent exhibition of Polish folk culture is in the old town hall at Plac Wolnica 1, about 100 metres from Esterka House: tickets cost 20 PLN, 15 PLN reduced, and entry is free on Tuesdays. The museum’s only current temporary exhibition, “Tropem renifera. Opowieść o kulturach Północy” (On the Reindeer’s Trail. A Story of the Cultures of the North) , is travelling outside Krakow, at the Regional Museum in Radomsko, until 30 September 2026.

Three Krakow temporary exhibitions open this autumn 2026 on related themes of craft and applied art:

• Krakow Bobbin Lace - A Living Heritage (Krzysztofory Palace, until 25 October 2026) - textile handwork shown through today’s lacemakers, a technique that, like Kogut’s batik, still has living practitioners.
• Moda Polska (Polish Fashion) in the Collection of the National Museum in Krakow (Szołayski House, until 13 June 2027) - Polish fashion design from the 1960s to the 1990s, applied art from the industrial rather than the handmade side.
• Picasso and the Pikasiaks. Modern Ceramics (Szołayski House, until 7 February 2027) - Polish decorative ceramics after 1956 next to Picasso’s platters, for visitors whom Kogut’s work drew in mainly through its ornament.

Museum profile: Esterka House .