Stacja Rzeźba 2026 (Sculpture Station)

Concrete, the Podhale sculptor Henryk Burzec and the Olympic skier Barbara Grocholska-Kurkowiak are the three starting points of “Stacja Rzeźba 2026” (“Sculpture Station”), a show of new sculpture on view since 28 August 2026 at Villa Koliba, the Tatra Museum’s Museum of the Zakopane Style at 18 Kościeliska Street. The museum has not announced a closing date. It publishes no English text on the show; the words below are our translation of its Polish announcement.

Tatra Museum on the exhibition:

Stacja Rzeźba 2026 is the 2nd Nationwide Artistic and Research Symposium, which combines sculptural practice with getting to know the local cultural heritage of Podhale. This year’s edition is inspired by the work of Henryk Burzec and by the figure of Barbara Grocholska-Kurkowiak - an outstanding alpine skier, Olympian, poet, participant in the Warsaw Uprising and Honorary Citizen of Zakopane. Her life, bound up with both the mountains and sport, becomes a starting point for reflection on movement, perseverance and pushing one’s own limits. Henryk Burzec’s work, in turn - he was one of the most outstanding Polish sculptors associated with Podhale - is the inspiration for working with concrete, the leading material of this year’s edition. A dialogue with the legacy of these two exceptional figures will become the starting point for individual searches for a contemporary language of sculpture and for experiments with form, material and dynamics.

What to expect

The show closes the second edition of a nationwide sculpture symposium, a working retreat at which artists make new pieces on site, and it presents what was made there. Concrete was the leading material. At Koliba, a house filled with carved wood in the Zakopane Style, that is an unexpected pairing, and anyone who knows the villa from an earlier visit will find something quite different from its furniture and woodcarving.

The museum named the villa’s garden as the venue of the opening, held on 28 August 2026 at 17:00. It does not say where the works stand now; concrete sculpture and a garden opening point to the garden, but that is our inference, not the museum’s statement. The show is missing from the museum’s list of temporary exhibitions, and the branch page still gives “Rysy” as Koliba’s only exhibition. The museum names neither the number of works nor the artists.

The post by the Faculty of Sculpture of the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw , dated 8 September 2026, says more. It lists twelve artists and three organisers, who prepared the show together with the Tatra Museum, and states that it runs “until the first snow”. The museum has not confirmed this, so this page gives no closing date.

Fifteen minutes is enough for the sculptures themselves. With the interiors of Koliba and the “Rysy” show, allow about an hour and a quarter. That is our estimate; the museum gives no visiting time.

Context

Henryk Burzec (1919-2005) was born in Międzyrzec Podlaski. He finished Zakopane’s School of Wood Industry in 1939 and after the war studied sculpture under Xawery Dunikowski at the Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków. He settled in Zakopane in 1954, and from 1987 until his death he ran a gallery of his own work in his house, once the studio of the painter Teodor Axentowicz. Two of his outdoor sculptures stand in the town: “Baca” (the head shepherd) outside the Gazda hotel and “Orbity” (Orbits) outside the town hall.

Barbara Grocholska-Kurkowiak was born in 1927 in Falenty near Warsaw. At seventeen she served as a first-aid nurse in the Warsaw Uprising of 1944; after the war she moved to Zakopane for her health and only there, at 18, took up skiing. She raced at the Winter Olympics in Oslo in 1952 and Cortina d’Ampezzo in 1956, won many Polish alpine titles and later coached young skiers. Her books include “Pod otwartym niebem” (Under the Open Sky, 1999) and “Zawisnąć w locie” (To Hang in Flight, 2006).

Tickets and time

Admission: the museum does not say whether the show needs a ticket. Its notice of the opening ends with the line “Wstęp wolny w ramach promocji Muzeum Tatrzańskiego” (free admission as part of the Tatra Museum’s promotion). In the museum’s August programme the same formula is attached to the opening as an event; whether it also covers seeing the show later, and, if the works are in the garden, whether you can enter it without a ticket to the villa, the museum does not say - ask at the ticket desk.

Villa Koliba prices: permanent display 25 PLN (reduced 12 PLN), permanent and temporary display 28 PLN (reduced 14 PLN), temporary display only 8 PLN (reduced 4 PLN). Thursday is the free day for the permanent displays. The weekly combined ticket to every open branch of the Tatra Museum costs 69 PLN (reduced 34 PLN); residents of Zakopane, Nowy Targ and seven neighbouring municipalities pay 1 PLN.

Villa hours: Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Sunday 9:00-17:00 (9 AM to 5 PM), Friday and Saturday 11:00-19:00, closed on Tuesday; last entry half an hour before closing. The museum publishes a single timetable for Koliba with no seasonal variant, so it applies from October as well. If the works are in the garden, the museum does not say whether it keeps the same hours. Check the hours and prices page before you go.

Worth it if you are visiting Koliba anyway or if contemporary sculpture interests you - most likely shown in the villa’s garden, though the museum does not say where; pair it with the villa’s interiors and with “Rysy”. Do not travel to Zakopane for this show alone: the museum gives neither dates nor a number of works, and according to the Faculty of Sculpture’s post the show ends with the first snow. If you come in late autumn, call or e-mail the branch first (+48 18 20 136 02, koliba@muzeumtatrzanskie.pl ) to check that the sculptures are still up.

English on site: the museum states nothing about English labels or tours for this show.

See also

• Rysy - Szymon Klejborowski - the other show in the same villa, until 31 December 2026: a joiner and sculptor works with a table designed by Stanisław Barabasz; you can see both in one visit.
• Our Legacy. 150 Years since the Founding of the Woodcarving School in Zakopane - the anniversary show of the school Henryk Burzec finished in 1939, at the Art Gallery at Villa Oksza, 25 Zamoyskiego Street, until 15 November 2026.
• Tatra Museum profile - the main building at 10 Krupówki Street with the permanent display on Podhale; it also explains the weekly ticket that covers Koliba.

Museum profile: Tatra Museum in Zakopane .