Images. Art Textiles by Wojciech Sadley and Tomasz Sadley

A small display of gifts in the lapidarium beneath Lublin Castle’s Gothic Holy Trinity Chapel. It pairs textiles by Wojciech Sadley, a Lublin-born pioneer of the Polish school of textile art, with silk paintings by his son Tomasz. It needs its own 5 PLN ticket and runs until 18 October 2026. The museum publishes no English text, so both the English title and the quotation below are our translations.

The National Museum in Lublin on the exhibition:

Both father and son are acclaimed Polish artists, the most outstanding representatives of the Polish school of textile art.

Wojciech Sadley was a professor at the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts who revolutionised the approach to textiles, treating them as three-dimensional soft sculpture. His works often combine raw materials with profound sacred and existential symbolism. The artist gave the museum several works.

Tomasz Sadley continues the family’s artistic tradition, concentrating on painting, printmaking and design, where he often explores the relationship between colour and surface texture. Like his father, he also paints on silk. Three such works are the artist’s gift to the museum and will be shown in the lapidarium.

What to expect

This is a display, not a major exhibition. The museum names two sets of gifts: several works donated by Wojciech Sadley himself and three silk paintings from Tomasz Sadley. It does not say how many of the father’s pieces are on show, nor does it explain the title “Wizerunki”, which means images or likenesses. The regional public broadcaster TVP3 Lublin, in a report of 19 September 2026, describes Tomasz’s silks as large-format works.

The display belongs to a year-long series marking the museum’s 120th anniversary; the museum itself opened on 12 December 1906. Throughout 2026 the museum puts gifts from a different group of donors on view every few weeks. The lapidarium turns over with the series: from 22 October it will hold sculptures by Roman Stańczak.

The museum set a meeting with Tomasz Sadley for Saturday 19 September 2026 at 12:00. That date has passed, and no further events around the display have been announced.

You will see the son’s surname spelled two ways. The museum’s display title uses “Sadley”, its meeting announcement “Sadlej”, and the Maria Grzegorzewska University in Warsaw, where he is a professor, also uses “Sadlej”. Search under both if you want to find more of his work.

Context

Wojciech Sadley (1932-2023) was born in Lublin and studied piano and composition at the city’s music conservatory. He went on to study interior architecture and painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw, where from 1968 he ran the experimental textile studio. His tapestry “Oświęcim” (Auschwitz) was shown in 1962 at the first International Tapestry Biennial in Lausanne, the event that made Polish textile art known worldwide.

Tomasz Sadley is a painter and a professor at the Institute of Art Education of the Maria Grzegorzewska University in Warsaw. Like his father, he works on silk, a costly support that forgives no mistakes, and in 2019 he ran a silk-painting workshop for his students. Father and son have shown together before, including a 2014 family exhibition, “Three Generations of Sadley”, at the Kasztel manor in Szymbark in southern Poland.

Tickets and time

The display has its own ticket: 5 PLN. The museum sells it through its online ticket system under the Polish name “Dary, darczyńcy, kolekcje. Tkanina artystyczna Wojciecha Sadleya i Tomasza Sadleya”, at a single price with no reduced rate. The price list on the museum’s website does not include it.

Does a chapel ticket get you in? For the July display in the same lapidarium, the museum said the Holy Trinity Chapel ticket also gave access. It says nothing of the kind for this display, nor for the 80 PLN combined ticket that includes temporary exhibitions. If you already hold one of those, ask at the ticket desk before paying the extra 5 PLN.

Don’t count on a Monday. In the ticket system, Monday 28 September has no entry slots for the display, while the other days of that week do (as of 23 September 2026). The museum publishes no separate hours for the lapidarium. Until 30 September the permanent galleries open 9:00-18:00 Tuesday to Thursday and Sunday, and 9:00-19:00 on Friday and Saturday; from 1 October they close an hour earlier, at 17:00 and 18:00. The last day of the display is Sunday 18 October.

Free days: the museum announces them month by month, on no fixed weekday, on its visitor information page (Polish only). They cover the permanent galleries and the chapel but not the tower; the page does not say whether they cover the lapidarium displays.

Allow 15-20 minutes and combine it with the Holy Trinity Chapel directly above. Chapel entry is sold for a set hour, so buy that ticket first and use the wait for the lapidarium.

English on site: the museum publishes no English information about this display and says nothing about English labels, audio guides or tours for it.

Who it is for: anyone interested in textile art, silk painting or post-war Polish art. Who can skip it: visitors with an hour at the castle who have not yet seen the chapel frescoes; the chapel comes first. The museum does not describe wheelchair access to the lapidarium, so call +48 81 537 96 60 before you go (Monday to Friday, 7:30-15:30).

What the press says

No English-language coverage was found, and nobody has reviewed the display, as of 23 September 2026. There are two news items in Polish, neither critical:

• TVP3 Lublin (19 September 2026, video report, no byline): the museum’s collection grows through donors, and Tomasz Sadley, inspired by his father, makes large-format works on silk - link .
• Radio ESKA Lublin (11 March 2026, by “PW”): a preview of the anniversary year that lists Wojciech and Tomasz Sadley among the artists in the series of gift displays - link .

See also

• National Museum in Lublin (Lublin Castle) - the Holy Trinity Chapel, with its Byzantine-Ruthenian frescoes of 1418, stands directly above the lapidarium.
• Tamara Lempicka - Beyond Borders - a temporary exhibition in the same castle, also built on the museum’s own acquisitions, with a separate 40 PLN ticket.
• Holy Dialogue - sacred art from the KUL Museum collection in Trinity Tower, until 31 October 2026, for those drawn by the sacred strand in Sadley’s work.

The museum’s descriptions of every display in the series are on its anniversary displays page (Polish only), and prices and hours on its visitor information page .

Museum profile: National Museum in Lublin (Lublin Castle) .