Art Déco and the Sacred. Decorative Art of the Interwar Period

From 23 April to 13 September 2026 the Warsaw Archdiocese Museum showed Art Déco and the Sacred, the first survey in Poland on this scale of interwar decorative art made for churches and religious life.

Warsaw Archdiocese Museum on the exhibition:

“Art Déco and the Sacred. Decorative Art of the Interwar Period” is the first exhibition in Poland to show, on this scale, the ties between the modern aesthetics of the interwar period and religious space. Chalices and vestments, patens and military scapulars, medallions, prints and plaques - objects that once served the liturgy day to day - appear here as testimony to a singular moment when the tradition of sacred art met the language of modernism and the elegance of the art déco style.

What to expect

The exhibition ran until 13 September 2026. The curators - Dr hab. Anna Kostrzyńska-Miłosz and Dr Agnieszka Kasprzak - also led curator-guided tours, and a lecture series on the decorative art of the interwar period accompanied the show.

The exhibition description and the lecture programme remain on the Warsaw Archdiocese Museum’s website.

After the show

The museum’s page says the catalogue is sold at the museum bookshop (Księgarnia MAW); according to KAI it presents every work on display. The museum gives no publisher, ISBN or price.

The Catholic news agency KAI (eKAI.pl, Barbara Sułek-Kowalska, 23 April 2026) counted more than 150 objects, among them a chasuble from Wawel Cathedral designed by Zofia Stryjeńska - article. Polish Radio Two (5 May 2026) reported that the curators built the show in seven months and that Oscar-winning set designer Ewa Braun praised both the selection and the display - article in Polish.

Two exhibitions are on now at the Warsaw Archdiocese Museum, in the Old Town:

• Tragedy and Gestures, on the painter Wiesław Szamborski - a dozen or so canvases from 1964-2013 shown around the theme of Poland’s independent culture of the 1980s, until 15 November 2026.
• Józef Czapski - L’Humanité - drawings and paintings by Czapski from the museum’s own collection, until 29 November 2026.

Other Warsaw museums cover the interwar years and the applied arts:

• Coup d’État and Sanacja through the Eyes of Caricature at the Museum of Independence - the same period seen through the satirical drawings of Gustaw Rogalski and Zdzisław Czermański, until 30 September 2026.
• Polish Poster. The Collection, Part 2 at the Poster Museum in Wilanów, a branch of the National Museum in Warsaw - one of its six chapters covers interwar artistic advertising, until 27 September 2026.
• Sculpture for the Wall Unit at Królikarnia, also part of the National Museum in Warsaw - ceramic figurines from the Institute of Industrial Design, mass-produced in 1956-1965, the decorative art of the next era, until 25 October 2026.

Museum profile: Warsaw Archdiocese Museum.