Photographic Documentation: Mikołaj Smoczyński, Performances by Zdzisław Kwiatkowski, Actions by Włodzimierz Borowski, Jan Ziemski

An artist’s action usually leaves behind nothing but a photograph, and an old exhibition only a picture of the room. The National Museum in Lublin announced an anniversary display built from such records in the Zamek Group gallery at Lublin Castle, from 6 November 2026 to 3 January 2027. The museum publishes the description in Polish only, so the quotation below is our translation.

The National Museum in Lublin on the exhibition:

Photographic documentation is a valuable record of the activity of the Zamek Group and the avant-garde. It includes recordings of performative actions by Włodzimierz Borowski and Zdzisław Kwiatkowski which, because they were ephemeral, have survived mainly thanks to visual documentation, conveying the atmosphere, the dynamics and the relations between the artist, the space and the audience. Photographs of objects and the exhibition documentation of Włodzimierz Borowski and Jan Ziemski make it possible to trace how the works were presented and to reconstruct the original character of the exhibitions.

What to expect

This is not a separate temporary exhibition but a display set inside the permanent gallery “Zamek Group and the Avant-garde”. It belongs to a year-long series marking the museum’s 120th anniversary: since late March 2026, short presentations of gifts from the collection have rotated through the castle’s rooms. It is the sixth display of the series in this gallery and the last one its schedule provides for.

This time the museum announced photographs, not paintings, of two kinds: records of the performative actions of Borowski and Kwiatkowski, and photographs of objects and past exhibitions by Borowski and Ziemski. The museum gives neither the number of photographs nor their authors or dates. Mikołaj Smoczyński’s name is in the display’s title, but the museum’s description says nothing about him, so it is not known whether he appears as the photographer or as the subject.

The point of the display comes from the room around it. The gallery tells the Zamek Group’s story through the painting treated as an object, with varied texture and non-painterly materials. These photographs show the other side of that story: what happened away from the canvas and could never be hung on a wall. For the whole run, the same gallery also holds paintings by Tomasz Zawadzki, a contemporary abstract painter the museum places in the group’s tradition.

The display replaces the early figurative works by Jerzy Durakiewicz and Tytus Dzieduszycki-Sas, which were on until 1 November. As of 16 October 2026, the museum had announced neither an opening event nor guided tours for this display.

Context

The Zamek Group grew in the second half of the 1950s out of the Circle of Young Artists, founded in Lublin by art history students at the Catholic University (KUL), and broke up in 1960. “Zamek” means castle. Most of its members were amateurs, and the critic Jerzy Ludwiński edited the group’s magazine, “Struktury”. Borowski and Ziemski now count among Poland’s leading exponents of matter painting.

Włodzimierz Borowski (1930-2008) soon left painting as such behind. From the late 1950s he built assemblages he called Artons, and from 1963 mirror pieces called Manilusy. In 1966 he began his series of Syncretic Shows, which made him one of the pioneers of performance art in Poland. Jan Ziemski (1920-1988) formed “formury” in plaster between 1960 and 1964, object-paintings with a complex texture, and later experimented with optical illusions of light and movement.

Mikołaj Smoczyński (1955-2009) studied in Łódź and in Lublin, where he taught at Maria Curie-Skłodowska University (UMCS) from 1979. He is known for site-specific installations and black-and-white staged photographs. His series “Secret Performance” was made between 1983 and 1993 in a single Lublin studio at 11 Zana Street and ended when the building was demolished. Neither Wikipedia nor culture.pl has an entry on Zdzisław Kwiatkowski, the performance artist, and the museum gives only his name.

Tickets and time

The museum announced no separate ticket for the display. The museum’s price list does not mention the anniversary displays, and the “Zamek Group and the Avant-garde” gallery is one of the permanent exhibitions. On that reading, the permanent exhibitions ticket covers it: 20 PLN standard, 15 PLN reduced. A combined ticket for the permanent exhibitions, the chapel and the tower costs 40 PLN (30 PLN reduced) and is sold only at the museum’s ticket desk. Children under 7 go free.

Free-entry days are announced month by month in a table on the museum’s Visitor information page (Polish). They cover the permanent exhibitions, this gallery included, and the chapel, but not the tower.

The whole run falls in the winter season (October to March): Tuesday to Thursday and Sunday 9:00-17:00, Friday and Saturday 9:00-18:00. The permanent exhibitions are closed on Mondays; the chapel and the tower open, but this gallery does not. The museum has not published hours for 11 November, Christmas or New Year’s Day. The display closes on Sunday 3 January 2027.

Allow 15-20 minutes for the photographs themselves, or about 45 minutes with the rest of the Zamek Group gallery and the Zawadzki display. The exhibitions are on three floors linked by two lifts and a platform lift; the museum says the tower is the only part of the building not accessible to visitors with reduced mobility. A free audio guide app covers the permanent exhibitions, but the museum does not say whether it includes the anniversary displays.

For visitors from abroad: the page on the anniversary displays is in Polish only, and the museum says nothing about English labels for this display. You can look at the photographs without any Polish, but whose actions and exhibitions they show is best read up beforehand in the “Context” section above.

Who it is for: anyone interested in Polish action and performance art, art history students, and anyone touring the castle’s permanent exhibitions anyway. Who can skip it: anyone who wants to see painting rather than documentation. The group’s paintings hang in the same gallery, but this display is photographs, so do not make a special trip for it.

See also

• National Museum in Lublin (Lublin Castle) - the venue: nine permanent exhibitions, the Holy Trinity Chapel with frescoes completed in 1418, and the keep with its viewing terrace.
• Tomasz Zawadzki - a display in the same gallery, on until 3 January 2027, so you can see it on the same visit: contemporary abstraction grown from the Zamek Group tradition.
• Labirynt Gallery - the city gallery whose collection includes Zamek Group works, Jan Ziemski’s among them, and performance work by Włodzimierz Borowski.

Prices are on the National Museum in Lublin’s price list (Polish), and the full series schedule is on the anniversary displays page (Polish).

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