Posters from the gifts of Krzysztof Dydo, Alfred Hałasa and Dorota Folga-Januszewska, and F. Starowieyski's design for the Metafora poster

A small display of Polish art posters in the corridor beside the Orthodox Church Painting Gallery at Lublin Castle: work from three donations, rounded off by a single design by Franciszek Starowieyski, one of the best-known names of the Polish School of Posters. It is one of the gift displays the National Museum in Lublin is running through its 120th-anniversary year to thank its donors, and it closes on 1 November 2026. The museum publishes this programme in Polish only, so the quotation below is our translation.

The National Museum in Lublin on the exhibition:

The display presents a selection of exhibition posters created in the circle of the Dydo Poster Gallery, original posters by Alfred Hałasa and theatre posters by Zygmunt Januszewski. They show the variety of graphic and aesthetic strategies found in the Polish art poster, underlining the importance of the poster as an autonomous form of artistic expression. The display is complemented by a design for the poster for “Metafora” by Franciszek Starowieyski - an outstanding representative of the Polish School of Posters.

What to expect

This is not a gallery of its own but the walls of the corridor beside the Orthodox Church Painting Gallery; the museum does not say whether the corridor is on the permanent-exhibition route. It also gives no number of posters, no titles and no curator. What is known comes from the anniversary programme: three groups of work and one design.

• Exhibition posters from the circle of the Dydo Poster Gallery - the Kraków poster gallery run by the collector Krzysztof Dydo.
• Original posters by Alfred Hałasa - a designer born in the Zamość region of eastern Poland who has been based in Canada since the 1970s.
• Theatre posters by Zygmunt Januszewski - a graphic artist and illustrator who taught at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw. The title lists the art historian and museologist Dorota Folga-Januszewska among the donors; the museum does not say outright that these posters came from her, though pairing the title with the description points that way.
• Franciszek Starowieyski’s design for the “Metafora” poster - a single work. The Kuyavian-Pomeranian Digital Library catalogues a 1976 Starowieyski poster titled “Metafora’ 76. Ogólnopolska wystawa malarstwa” (a nationwide painting exhibition); the museum does not say whether this is the design for that poster.

Since 22 September the same corridor has also held a second anniversary display: works by Jacek Antoni Zieliński, photographs the artist painted over, on until 15 November.

Context

The Polish School of Posters is the name given in the 1960s to a group of Polish designers whose film, theatre and exhibition posters won international recognition. Their common ground was economy of form, metaphor rather than literal illustration, and hand-drawn lettering. In communist Poland the posters were commissioned by state institutions and had to pass the censor, which only sharpened the taste for allusion.

Franciszek Starowieyski (1930-2009) made his name with theatre and film posters in the 1960s, and in 1986 became the first Polish artist to have a one-man show at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Krzysztof Dydo, a Kraków collector and poster expert born in 1945, has run his Poster Gallery (Galeria Plakatu) at Kramy Dominikańskie in Kraków since 1985. Alfred Hałasa, born in 1942 and a graduate of the Kraków Academy of Fine Arts, taught design at the Université du Québec à Montréal for more than 40 years. Zygmunt Januszewski (1956-2013) led the illustration studio at the Warsaw Academy and drew for papers from “Gazeta Wyborcza” to The Guardian.

Tickets and time

There is no separate ticket for this display. The museum’s price list does not mention the anniversary displays at all. The Orthodox Church Painting Gallery is one of the nine permanent exhibitions, so our reading is that the permanent-exhibitions ticket gets you into the corridor: 20 PLN standard, 15 PLN reduced. The museum does not confirm this in writing; if in doubt, ask at the ticket desk. The combined castle ticket (permanent exhibitions, chapel and tower) costs 40 PLN or 30 PLN and is sold only at the ticket desk. Children under seven go free.

Free-admission days are announced month by month on the museum’s Visit page (Polish). They cover the permanent exhibitions and the chapel, but not the tower. The museum does not say whether they cover the anniversary displays; with the posters hanging beside a permanent gallery it is likely.

Opening hours follow the permanent exhibitions. Until 30 September: Tuesday to Thursday and Sunday 9:00-18:00, Friday and Saturday 9:00-19:00. From 1 October winter hours apply: Tuesday to Thursday and Sunday 9:00-17:00, Friday and Saturday 9:00-18:00. The permanent exhibitions are closed on Mondays. The last day, 1 November, is a Sunday and also All Saints’ Day, a public holiday in Poland; the museum has not published hours for it, so do not leave your visit to the final day.

Allow 15-20 minutes for the posters themselves and pair them with the Orthodox Church Painting Gallery next door. From 2 October the same anniversary series adds contemporary prints from the collection of Irena Hochman and Tadeusz Mysłowski in the hall outside the Gallery of 19th- and 20th-Century Polish Painting, on until 15 November.

English on site: the museum says nothing about English captions for the anniversary displays, and the programme page has no English version. Posters largely speak through the image, but do not count on translated labels.

Who it is for: poster and graphic-design enthusiasts, design students, and anyone already visiting the castle’s permanent galleries who can spare a quarter of an hour. Who can skip it: anyone travelling to Lublin just for Starowieyski. Here you get one design; for the full story of the Polish poster go to the Poster Museum at Wilanów in Warsaw.

What the press says

No review of this display was found, and nothing in English, as of 23 September 2026. The only press mention comes from a preview of the whole anniversary year:

• Radio ESKA Lublin (11 March 2026, Olka Mazur): a preview of the museum’s 120th anniversary that names Franciszek Starowieyski among the artists whose work the museum would show during the year to thank its donors - link .

See also

• National Museum in Lublin (Lublin Castle) - nine permanent exhibitions, including the Orthodox Church Painting Gallery beside which the posters hang, and the Gothic Holy Trinity Chapel with its frescoes of 1418.
• Jacek Antoni Zieliński - the other anniversary display in the same corridor, until 15 November 2026: photographs the artist painted over.
• Exhibition of Original Posters by Łukasz Tarkowski - contemporary Polish posters in the open air: his posters for the museum’s own events, hung on the fence of the Lublin Village Open-Air Museum.
• Poster Museum at Wilanów - if the Lublin display leaves you wanting more: the world’s oldest poster museum, with a permanent exhibition of Polish posters from the turn of the 20th century to today.

The full programme of anniversary displays is on the museum’s website (Polish only), and prices are in the Lublin Castle price list (Polish).

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