Nature as Inspiration, Place and Material

Wicker sculptures by Maria Polakowska-Prokopiak, a professor at the art faculty of Maria Curie-Skłodowska University (UMCS), stand in the open air around the Kościuszko Manor House in the university’s Botanical Garden, in the green Sławinek district of north-west Lublin. You see them on a walk through the garden, on the ordinary garden ticket, until the season ends on 31 October 2026. The garden publishes no English text, so the quotation below is our translation of its Polish description.

The UMCS Botanical Garden on the exhibition:

For the artist Maria Polakowska-Prokopiak, nature is not only an inspiration but also a space for dialogue and an artistic material. For years her work has grown out of close observation of nature and out of working with natural materials such as wicker, stone and fibre. The artist creates forms that not only echo organic structures but often become an integral part of the landscape - of gardens and parkland. Shown in the Garden’s grounds around the Manor House, the exhibition enters into a relationship with its surroundings, creating new visual, formal and semantic contexts and blurring the boundary between art and nature.

What to expect

This is an outdoor show: no gallery room, no queue, no entry slot. The garden gives the grounds of the Kościuszko Manor House as the setting, so the pieces stand on the lawns and among the trees by the house, not inside it. The garden publishes neither a list nor a count of the works. The Lublin news site Lublin112 counted “a dozen or more” wicker pieces in July, and in April Lublin24 published a photograph from the UMCS Botanical Garden of wicker spheres captioned as part of the installation.

Do not read the photo gallery on the garden’s page as a catalogue. Its captions refer to works shown elsewhere before, such as “Pears on a Cork Tree” and “EKO”, both captioned “Arboretum Bolestraszyce”, and to an earlier solo show at the Łopaciński Library gallery in Lublin. So do not expect those exact objects by the house.

The show opened on 12 April 2026, the day the garden began its season, with a reception at the manor house. A second outdoor sculpture show, Piotr Zieleniak’s “Reminiscences” , opened alongside it the same day, so one walk covers both.

Context

Maria Polakowska-Prokopiak graduated in painting from the State Higher School of Fine Arts in Wrocław in 1984 and now teaches in the Department of Painting and Drawing at UMCS. The Historical Museum of Tarnobrzeg credits her with more than 40 solo and about 140 group exhibitions, and lists paper, fibre, one-off wicker pieces and recycled art alongside painting. At the university she co-runs an eco-art studio.

Wicker has a following of its own in Polish garden art. The Bolestraszyce Arboretum near Przemyśl, in south-east Poland, has for years hosted an international artists’ workshop, “Wicker in the Arboretum”, where art-school lecturers build pieces that then stay in the grounds. Both works pictured in the UMCS garden’s announcement of the opening are captioned “Arboretum Bolestraszyce”.

Tickets and time

The garden ticket is enough: 16 PLN standard, 11 PLN reduced, 45 PLN family. The garden opens the show “during the Garden’s opening hours” and the pieces stand outdoors; the higher price of 18 PLN and 15 PLN buys entry to the manor house interiors as well. The price list does not name the exhibition, so this is our reading of the garden’s two pages. Pay the extra only if you also want to see inside the house.

Who gets in free. Children under five and holders of the UMCS Alumni Card. Holders of the Lublin Senior Card get in free every Monday (not for organised groups); the garden sets out its discount schemes on its discounts page (Polish only). A named season pass costs 120 PLN, which only pays off from the eighth visit.

Opening hours. According to the table on the garden’s opening hours page , it is open daily: 9:00-18:00 in September, 9:00-17:00 in October. The same page says tickets are sold until 17:30 and the exit gate closes at 18:30, without distinguishing months, which does not square with the October table. In October, arrive by about 15:30.

How long. Allow 20-30 minutes for this show, about an hour with “Reminiscences” next to it. That is our estimate; the garden gives none. The show ends with the season: the garden is open to visitors from 12 April to 31 October 2026.

English on site: the garden’s pages about the show are in Polish only and say nothing about English labels, audio guides or tours. With outdoor sculpture that matters little; the works do not depend on text.

Who it is for: anyone visiting the garden anyway, families who want art outside a gallery, and visitors interested in craft materials and eco-art. Who can skip it: anyone planning a trip to Lublin for the sculpture alone. It adds to a walk in the garden rather than justifying one.

Getting in. The manor’s postal address is ul. Sławinkowska 3, but the ticket office and visitor entrance are on ul. Willowa, between Nos. 58 and 60.

What the press says

No English-language coverage was found, and nobody has reviewed the show, as of 23 September 2026. There are four news pieces in Polish, none of them critical:

• Lublin112 (19 July 2026, Leszek Mikrut): a summer round-up of art in the garden; the show is “a dozen or more” wicker works, one of five outdoor displays around the manor house and in the rose garden - link .
• Radio Centrum (13 April 2026, Maria Mąsior): a report on the season opening with a recording in which the artist talks about wicker as a material - link .
• Lublin24 (12 April 2026, Mikołaj Borowiec): a report on the garden’s opening day and the reception; the artist describes how people working in wicker passed their fascination on to her - link .
• Lublin24 (3 April 2026, Mikołaj Borowiec): a season preview with a photograph from the UMCS Botanical Garden showing wicker spheres, captioned as part of the installation - link .

The artist to Lublin24 (our translation): “Wicker inspires, and every artist uses it in their own way.”

See also

• Kościuszko Manor House - the venue: the rebuilt manor of the Kościuszko family inside the botanical garden, with a combined ticket for the interiors.
• Reminiscences - the second outdoor sculpture show by the house, on the same ticket and until the same day.
• Journey Through Life - paintings by Inka Zamoyska inside the manor house, only until 10 October 2026, on the combined garden and manor ticket.
• Królikarnia Sculpture Museum - if sculpture in a park appeals: in Warsaw, Królikarnia’s sculpture park is open all year and free.

The exhibition description is on the UMCS Botanical Garden’s page (Polish only); prices are on the price list and hours on the opening hours page .

Museum profile: Kościuszko Manor House .