Debuts - sculpture by UMCS students

The exhibition “Debuts” (Debiuty), which ran 1 June 2026 - 31 October 2026 , showed reliefs and busts by eleven students of the Department of Sculpture and Ceramics of the UMCS (Maria Curie-Skłodowska University) Faculty of Arts in the open air, in the Rosarium section of the UMCS Botanical Garden.

UMCS Botanical Garden on the exhibition:

“Debuts” is a group exhibition by students of the Department of Sculpture and Ceramics of the UMCS Faculty of Arts. The exhibition presents reliefs and busts. Relief is a form seen less often in exhibition spaces today, which makes the mature and accomplished reliefs presented by the students all the more welcome. The bust, a classic subject of sculpture, has been treated here in a very individual way - the authors chose for themselves the figures they wanted to portray. The resulting works become, to a large extent, an artistic mirror of the young generation.

What to expect

This was an outdoor show: the works stood in the Rosarium section, on the garden grounds and outside the Kościuszko Manor House, so there was no need to go into the manor to see them. That is where the exhibition page, the garden’s May announcement and the UMCS press office’s release all place it.

The exhibition poster names eleven artists: Yevheniia Dychok, Julia Gajos, Łucja Kotwica, Alicja Kosmala, Tomasz Komsta, Polina Kolodina, Joanna Kuśmierz, Monika Letkiewicz, Kacper Gaczkowski, Aleksandra Poleszak and Anastazja Krystyńska. It gives the curator as Dr hab. Piotr Zieleniak.

“Debuts” belonged to the “Master and Student” (Mistrz i uczeń) series, in which the garden showed three exhibitions: “Young Movie”, an exhibition of AR films, “Debuts”, and “Prologue” (Prolog), a solo sculpture show by Kacper Gaczkowski, one of the “Debuts” artists. Both sculpture shows were prepared under the direction of Piotr Zieleniak. The garden announced the openings of all three for the exhibition’s first day, beside the Kościuszko Manor House.

Context

A relief (płaskorzeźba) is a sculptural composition made on a slab of stone, metal or wood on which the background is left in place. The sculpted parts therefore stay attached to a base of the same material. A bust shows a person down to the shoulders: the head, the neck and part of the chest and shoulders; it is a format of both sculpture and portrait painting.

Tickets and time

Ticket: the exhibition page named no separate ticket, price or booking, only that the show was outdoors and stood in the Rosarium. Since the works stood outdoors, outside the manor house, entry to the garden alone was enough to see them; the garden did not, however, say so in as many words.

Where: in the Rosarium section of the UMCS Botanical Garden, whose grounds are home to the Kościuszko Manor House, but not in the manor itself. Directions, the garden entrance, opening hours and prices are on the museum’s profile.

Time needed: about 15-20 minutes was enough for the show itself, since it consisted of reliefs and busts by eleven artists, gathered in a single section of the garden.

Who it was for: people following sculpture by UMCS students, and anyone walking in the garden anyway. Who could skip it: anyone who would have travelled to the garden for this show alone; it was a display of student work in one section of the garden, not a reason for a separate trip.

What the press says

• Student News (27 May 2026, unsigned): a notice of the openings that, following the organisers’ release, placed the outdoor shows in the Rosarium of the UMCS Botanical Garden - link.
• Lublin112 (18 July 2026, Leszek Mikrut): a photo report on the three outdoor shows of the “Master and Student” series that names the eleven “Debuts” artists and according to which one of the shows stood right next to the manor house and two in the Rosarium - link.

After the show

The garden’s events calendar announced the exhibition until the end of the season, and the garden’s May announcement gave all three outdoor shows of the “Master and Student” series the same last day. Together with “Debuts”, then, Kacper Gaczkowski’s “Prologue” and “Young Movie” also came to an end. The shows you can see now are gathered in the overview of temporary exhibitions in Lublin.

In his July report for Lublin112, Leszek Mikrut wrote, in the headline itself, that the series’ three outdoor shows were impossible to miss on a walk through the garden.

Museum profile: Kościuszko Manor House.