Roman Stańczak

From 22 October to 22 November 2026 the lapidarium beneath the Holy Trinity Chapel at Lublin Castle will show sculptures by Roman Stańczak, who represented Poland at the 2019 Venice Biennale. It is one of the gift displays marking the National Museum in Lublin’s 120th year, and this time the donors are the Saatchi family of London. The museum publishes no English text on the jubilee displays, so the quotation below is our translation of its Polish description.

National Museum in Lublin on the exhibition:

Roman Stańczak began his artistic path in the early 1990s at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw. It was a moment of abrupt transformation, and his art became a critical commentary on the political and economic situation in Poland. Roman Stańczak’s sculptures continue the tradition of ready-mades, yet the artist deconstructs them, reworks them and explores their impermanence; in the end they undergo at least partial destruction. The works are a gift from the collection of the Saatchi family in London.

What to expect

The display will fill the lapidarium on the ground floor of the Holy Trinity Chapel, the room where the museum rotates a new jubilee presentation every few weeks. The museum has not said how many sculptures will be on view or which ones. All it says is that they come from the Saatchi family collection.

Look for ordinary household objects attacked with a chisel or turned inside out. That has been Stańczak’s method since the early 1990s: he strips the surface off furniture and turns a kettle or a bathtub inside out like a glove. The effect can be unsettling, because a thing everyone has at home suddenly stops working as itself.

The London link is easy to trace. According to culture.pl, in 2018 the artist showed an inside-out bathtub, a sofa and a cabinet, among other pieces, in the group show “Black Mirror” at the Saatchi Gallery. Whether those are the sculptures now coming to Lublin, the museum does not say.

Context

Roman Stańczak was born in 1969 in Szczecin, on Poland’s Baltic coast. He studied sculpture at the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts in the studio of Grzegorz Kowalski, known as the “Kowalnia”, which also produced Paweł Althamer, Katarzyna Kozyra and Artur Żmijewski. He belongs to the generation of 1990s Polish critical art, although the Zachęta National Gallery notes that his work grew up on the margins of that movement.

Critics read his inside-out objects as a picture of Poland’s brutal economic transition after communism. The artist himself speaks rather of crossing to the “other side” of reality and of the spiritual hidden in matter. In the mid-1990s he left the art world for well over a decade, returning in 2013 with a figure of an angel in Althamer’s Bródno Sculpture Park in Warsaw.

In 2019 he filled the Polish Pavilion at the 58th Venice Biennale with a single work. “Flight” was a real private jet turned inside out, so that the cockpit and passenger seats sat on the outside and the wings were folded within. His work is held by, among others, the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw.

Tickets and time

The price is not yet known. As of 4 October 2026 the museum has not said what admission to this display costs: it is neither on the price list nor in the online ticket system. Two earlier displays in the same lapidarium, in July and September, each had a separate 5 PLN ticket; for the August display the museum gave no price. For the July display of a work by Zofia Pociłowska-Kann, the museum added that a Holy Trinity Chapel ticket (20 PLN, reduced 15 PLN) also covered it. For the September textile display by the Sadleys it said no such thing. Before you go, check the museum’s ticket system (it has an English version) or ask at the desk.

Ignore the old dates. As late as June 2026 the museum announced this display for 2 October - 15 November, and search engines still show those dates. The current schedule gives 22 October - 22 November 2026. Until 18 October the lapidarium still holds the Sadley textiles.

Hours. The museum publishes no separate hours for the lapidarium. The whole run falls in the winter season: the chapel above it opens Monday to Thursday and Sunday 9:00-17:00 (9 AM to 5 PM), Friday and Saturday 9:00-18:00. The permanent exhibitions keep the same hours but are closed on Mondays. Whether the lapidarium opens on Mondays the museum does not say; if in doubt, call +48 81 537 96 60 (Monday to Friday, 7:30-15:30). The last day is Sunday 22 November.

Free-admission days are announced month by month, on no fixed weekday, on the museum’s visitor-information page (Polish). They cover the permanent exhibitions, the Tamara Lempicka show and the chapel, but not the tower; the page does not say whether they cover the lapidarium displays. The opening day, Thursday 22 October, is one of the museum’s October free-admission days.

Allow 15-20 minutes and pair the display with the chapel. Chapel tickets are sold for a set full hour, with at most 60 visitors per hour, so buy your chapel slot first and see the lapidarium while you wait.

English on site: the museum’s English-language pages say nothing about English labels for the jubilee displays. Groups of up to 30 can book a guided tour in English: 250 PLN per group plus admission for the permanent exhibitions, 150 PLN for the chapel. Book at least a week ahead through edukacja@mnwl.pl .

Who it is for: anyone who saw “Flight” in Venice or read about it, and anyone curious about Polish critical art of the 1990s. Who can skip it: a visitor with an hour at the castle who came mainly for the chapel frescoes and Matejko’s “Union of Lublin”. This display is an add-on to that visit, not a reason to make it.

Events

• 22.10.2026, 17:00 - opening of the display in the lapidarium; the museum does not say whether entry is free or whether you need to register (October events calendar , Polish).

See also

• National Museum in Lublin (Lublin Castle) - the museum profile: the Holy Trinity Chapel with its 1418 frescoes, beneath which the lapidarium lies, the keep and nine permanent exhibitions.
• Tomasz Zawadzki - another display from the same series of gifts, paintings in the Zamek Group and Avant-garde gallery until 3 January 2027. Our reading is that the permanent-exhibitions ticket covers it; the museum does not say so outright.
• Jacek Antoni Zieliński - photographs painted over, a jubilee display in the corridor beside the Gallery of Orthodox Icon Painting until 15 November 2026. Between 22 October and 15 November you can see both on one day.
• Tamara Lempicka - Beyond Borders - a show at the castle, now listed by the museum among its permanent exhibitions, built on a recent acquisition, this time a purchase rather than a gift; separate ticket, 40 PLN.

The full jubilee schedule is on the museum’s jubilee displays page (Polish only), and prices are on its ticket page .

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