I Am a Political Animal. Jerzy Giedroyc and Kultura 1947-2000

In the year of Jerzy Giedroyc established by the Senate of the Republic of Poland, the Adam Mickiewicz Museum of Literature in Warsaw presents an exhibition devoted to one of the most important figures of twentieth-century Polish intellectual life and to the Literary Institute and the monthly Kultura that he created.

The exhibition shows Jerzy Giedroyc’s work at the meeting point of politics, literature and social life. It leads the visitor through the successive stages of his biography - from the experiences of his youth and his journalism in the interwar period, through wartime exile and the founding of the Literary Institute, to more than half a century of the Paris-based Kultura, which became one of the most important independent centres of Polish political and literary thought in exile.

Literature and the circle of writers gathered around Jerzy Giedroyc hold a special place in the narrative of the exhibition. Visitors can see photographs, archival documents and manuscripts connected with the most eminent authors published in Kultura and by the Literary Institute. Another important element of the display is Giedroyc’s correspondence with writers and intellectuals - a record of relationships that went beyond publishing collaboration and formed a broad network of contacts gathered around the idea of a free culture and independent thought.

What to expect

The show fills the first floor of the Museum of Literature’s main building at Rynek Starego Miasta 20, on the Old Town Market Square, and runs until 31 October 2026. This is an exhibition of paper and words - photographs, documents, manuscripts, letters and paintings. Much of the material comes from the archive of the Literary Institute in Maisons-Laffitte, near Paris, and is on public display for the first time.

What to look for:

• A map of Giedroyc’s network - dozens of writers and thinkers linked to the Institute, including foreign authors it published in Polish, among them Solzhenitsyn, Orwell and Greene (as curator Agnieszka Papieska described it on Polish Radio).
• Manuscripts and photographs of Kultura’s authors - Czesław Miłosz, Witold Gombrowicz, Jerzy Stempowski, Józef Czapski, Juliusz Mieroszewski, Konstanty A. Jeleński, Józef Wittlin and Stanisław Vincenz.
• Giedroyc’s correspondence with writers and intellectuals, the web of letters that kept the magazine going for half a century.
• Paintings by Józef Czapski and Jan Lebenstein from the museum’s own collection.

The title was one of Giedroyc’s favourite sayings, borrowed from Aristotle’s “Politics”. Curators: Agnieszka Papieska and Andrzej Stanisław Kowalczyk; exhibition design: Kuba Maria Mazurkiewicz. A bilingual Polish-English catalogue costs 75 PLN in the museum’s online bookshop.

Context

Jerzy Giedroyc (1906-2000) was born in Minsk and died in Maisons-Laffitte, a suburb west of Paris, where he ran his publishing house for more than 50 years. He founded the Literary Institute (Instytut Literacki) in Rome in 1946 with a small group of exiles that included the painter and writer Józef Czapski. A year later he moved it to France and launched the monthly Kultura, which appeared until 2000 and became one of the most important independent centres of Polish literary and political thought in exile. The Institute also published 512 books in its “Biblioteka Kultury” series and, from 1962, the quarterly “Zeszyty Historyczne”. The Polish Senate declared 2026 the Year of Jerzy Giedroyc.

Tickets and time

• Admission to the main building: 20 PLN regular, 10 PLN reduced. Large Family Card (Karta Dużej Rodziny) 8 PLN; groups over 10, 8 PLN per person. The price list gives no separate price for this exhibition.
• Free on Sundays - the museum says admission to the main building is free on Sundays, and this show is in the main building. The free Wednesdays on the price list apply only to the museum’s branches (the Broniewski, Dąbrowska and Strug museums), not to the Old Town site.
• Children under 7 go free.
• Hours: Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday 10:00-17:00, Thursday 12:00-20:00, closed Mondays. Last entry one hour before closing.
• 1 PLN tickets: on the opening weekend (27-28 June) entry to the show cost 1 PLN; the museum has announced no such offer for the closing weekend.
• Guided tour: 50 PLN, for groups and individual visitors.
• How long: allow about an hour for this show alone. It is built for reading, and letters and manuscripts do not reward a quick walk-through.
• English on site: the exhibition credits list an English translation (by Agnieszka Pokojska) and the catalogue is bilingual; the museum does not say on its page whether every label is in English. The talks in the museum’s programme are in Polish.

Who it is for: readers of Miłosz, Gombrowicz or Czapski, anyone curious about how Polish literature survived censorship from exile, and visitors interested in Cold War Europe. If you want visual spectacle or are visiting with small children, skip it. Best time: a Thursday evening until 20:00, or a free Sunday.

Events

As of 13 September 2026 the museum has not yet published its October programme.

• 29.09.2026, 17:00 - a talk in Polish on Eric Karpeles’s biography of the painter Józef Czapski (Polish edition “Prawie nic”), with the exhibition’s curators Agnieszka Papieska and Andrzej Kowalczyk and with Paweł Bień, audiovisual room, free: September programme

What the press says

No English-language coverage found so far.

• Polish Radio Two, “Wybieram Dwójkę” (23.06.2026, host Monika Zając): an interview with both curators just before the opening; Kowalczyk presents Giedroyc as a long-range political visionary, and Papieska talks about the map of his contacts and Czapski’s role - article and recording, in Polish
• TVP Polonia (09.04.2026, ASR): a preview by the show’s media patron, stressing its educational aim for generations raised in a free Poland - a preview, not a review - article, in Polish

Curator Andrzej Stanisław Kowalczyk on Polish Radio (our translation): “Giedroyc was deeply convinced that the artistic word could be a tool of political action.”

See also

• Museum of Literature - the permanent exhibition “Adam Mickiewicz 1798-1855”, with the poet’s manuscripts, is in the same building, so the two fit into one visit.
• “The Parnassus of Warsaw” - one of the museum’s two other temporary shows, on a century of the City of Warsaw Literary Award; a natural add-on if you came for 20th-century Polish writing.
• Warsaw Archdiocese Museum - its show “Józef Czapski - L’Humanité / Humanity” presents drawings and paintings by a co-founder of the Literary Institute, until 29 November 2026.

Tickets and opening hours are on the museum’s website.

Museum profile: Museum of Literature.