Reminiscences - sculpture by Piotr Zieleniak

Sculptures by a Lublin artist who teaches at the city’s Maria Curie-Skłodowska University (UMCS) stand in the open air beside the Kościuszko Manor House, so you see them on a walk through the university’s Botanical Garden. The show runs until 31 October 2026, the last day of the garden’s season. The garden publishes no English text, so the quotation below is our translation of its Polish description.

UMCS Botanical Garden on the exhibition:

Piotr Zieleniak’s exhibition “Reminiscences” is a journey through time of a kind - a record of experiences, emotions and memories set down in the form of sculptural objects. The works on show form a cross-section of the artist’s creative path, revealing both moments of experiment with material and works made in response to important events and inspirations.

It is a story about memory - the fleeting, unconscious kind that returns as images and associations. The exhibition takes on the character of a personal summing-up and, at the same time, of an intimate self-reflection on the passing of time, on experience, and on the strength that lets one keep going.

What to expect

This is an outdoor show, not a gallery room. The garden gives the grounds of the manor house as the location, and the Lublin news site Lublin112 reports that the sculptures stand next to Maria Polakowska-Prokopiak’s wicker pieces, which make up a second outdoor show. The opening was on 12 April 2026, the day the garden opened for the season.

The garden does not say how many works are on display. The photo gallery on its website captions six entries dated 2008 to 2024, and they show the range of materials well:

• “Leviathan” (“Lewiatan”, 2008) - metal and wood, two metres long; the longest piece in the gallery.
• “Nature - Endurance” (“Natura - trwanie”, 2009) - artificial stone and metal, 88 cm tall.
• “Disc” (“Dysk”, 2018) - metal, 115 cm.
• “Polluted River” (“Skażona rzeka”, 2024) - metal, 80 cm; the newest work in the set and the only one whose title points directly at the artist’s river cycles.

The gallery also shows “Birth - Beginning” (“Narodziny - początek”, 2009, metal and resin) and the pair “Schwell I, II” (2016, wood and metal).

Context

Piotr Zieleniak is a sculptor in the Department of Sculpture and Ceramics at UMCS; this season his students also have an outdoor sculpture show of their own in the garden. He has made public monuments, among them the monument to Józef Franczak, “Laluś”, in Świdnik, the town next to Lublin’s airport. Franczak, a Home Army soldier, is regarded as the last of the anti-communist “cursed soldiers”: he stayed in hiding until October 1963, when he was killed in a clash with a security-police unit.

Two more of his monuments stand in Zagórz, in south-eastern Poland, and commemorate the Bar Confederation, a noble uprising against Russian control of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1768-1772: an equestrian statue of the Unknown Bar Confederate and the Monument to the Last Confederate. The second stands by the ruins of the fortified Discalced Carmelite monastery, whose defence against the Russian army in November 1772 was the Confederation’s last battle.

Time and rivers are a running theme for him. In spring 2025 the Józef Czechowicz Literary Museum showed his small-scale sculptures as “River of Time: In the Space of Passing”. “Reminiscences” moves the theme outdoors; the captioned works in the garden’s online gallery date from 2008 to 2024.

Tickets and time

The garden ticket is enough: 16 PLN standard, 11 PLN reduced. The garden does not say so in as many words, but the sculptures stand outside the manor and the show is open during garden hours, not manor hours. The combined ticket that adds the Kościuszko Manor House costs 18 PLN and 15 PLN; pay the extra if you want the indoor shows too. A family ticket is 45 PLN (50 PLN with the manor), and children under five get in free.

There is no free day for everyone. The free Monday applies only to holders of the Lublin Senior Card, and UMCS alumni card holders enter the garden free.

Hours change with the month. The garden opens daily at 9:00; according to the table on its website it closes at 18:00 (6 PM) in September and at 17:00 in October. The same page says the ticket office sells tickets until 17:30 and the exit gate closes at 18:30, without naming months. In October, do not plan to arrive after 16:00.

The sculptures alone take 15-20 minutes, but they are a stop on a walk, not a destination: allow 2-3 hours for the 21-hectare garden. On a rainy day, everything here is out in the weather.

English on site: the garden’s website has no English version of this page and says nothing about English labels, audio guides or tours. The works carry no text you need to read to follow them.

Who it is for: garden visitors who like art in a landscape, and anyone who knows Zieleniak’s monuments and wants to see his less official work. Who can skip it: anyone who would travel out to the Sławinek district for this show alone; a handful of sculptures beside the manor does not justify a separate trip.

What the press says

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

• Lublin24 (3 April 2026, Mikołaj Borowiec): a preview of the garden’s season that lists “Reminiscences” among the three shows opening on 12 April - link .
• lubelski.pl (8 April 2026, editorial team): the same season preview, adding that the garden is open daily from 9:00 between April and October - link .
• Lublin112 (19 July 2026, Leszek Mikrut): a summer round-up of two outdoor shows by lecturers of the UMCS Faculty of Arts that places Zieleniak’s sculptures beside Polakowska-Prokopiak’s wicker and recalls his monuments - link .

See also

• Nature as Inspiration, Place and Material - the neighbouring outdoor show beside the manor, work in wicker and natural materials, on the same garden ticket.
• In the Flower Garden - Chodzież porcelain inside the Kościuszko Manor House, on the combined ticket.
• Kościuszko Manor House - the venue: a reconstructed manor linked to Tadeusz Kościuszko’s family, with indoor shows on the combined ticket.
• Lublin Village Open-Air Museum - the open-air museum about 1.5 km from the garden, if you have a whole day for this side of the city.

Opening hours and prices are on the UMCS Botanical Garden’s website (Polish only): opening hours and ticket prices ; the exhibition text is on the exhibition page .

Museum profile: Kościuszko Manor House .