The Conquest of Space: Space Race Posters - Tenth Pavilion, Warsaw Citadel

“Na podbój kosmosu” (The Conquest of Space) is an exhibition of posters from the collections of the Museum of Independence (Muzeum Niepodległości) on the space race and on Poles’ flights into space, from a 1957 poster to the poster of the Polish Ignis mission from 2025. It runs 22 May 2026 - 29 November 2026 in the Poster Gallery (Galeria Plakatu) at the Museum of the Tenth Pavilion of the Warsaw Citadel.

The Museum of the Tenth Pavilion on the exhibition (our translation):

The 1950s and 1960s were a time when the rivalry for outer space reached far beyond science - it was an expression of ambition, prestige and technological superiority. The space race between the world powers fired the imagination, and astronauts became the heroes of their eras, symbolising courage and the pushing of the limits of what is possible. In the Poster Gallery of the Museum of the Tenth Pavilion we will present objects showing the successive stages of this extraordinary journey - from the first attempts to reach for the stars to a moment of special significance for Poland: the flight of the first Pole into space. It is a story told through posters, graphic art and visual narratives that accompanied one of the most dynamic periods of the last century. The exhibition lets us look at the dreams of space from a different perspective - through the prism of art, which responded to great events and helped shape their image in the collective consciousness.

What to expect

The exhibition tells the story of the space race through posters, graphic art and art. It fills the Poster Gallery, the temporary exhibition gallery of the Museum of the Tenth Pavilion. The list of objects in the catalogue names 29 items, all from the collections of the Museum of Independence. Besides the posters, they include oil paintings by Feliks Mostowicz and Borys Okorokow, and a plaque and a medal commemorating the flight of the first Pole into space.

The curator of the exhibition is Marta Brodala of the Collections Department of the Museum of Independence. The exhibition includes posters by, among others, Tadeusz Jodłowski, Wojciech Zamecznik and Andrzej Pągowski.

The exhibition catalogue states that almost all the space-themed works in the museum’s collection were instruments of ideological propaganda, in which the conquest of space was meant to prove the superiority of the socialist system. So it is worth looking at the posters as political messages too, not only as graphic design.

Objects worth looking out for (descriptions according to the museum’s catalogue):

• Tadeusz Jodłowski, “40 lat władzy radzieckiej” (40 Years of Soviet Power), 1957 - the red ball of Sputnik next to the hammer and sickle; according to the catalogue, the poster stresses that it was the USSR that first opened the way into space for humanity.
• Wojciech Zamecznik, “Radziecka rakieta księżycowa” (The Soviet Moon Rocket), 1959 - a photomontage with a photograph of the Moon on the black background of space, stressing the Soviet achievement.
• Andrzej Pągowski, “Pierwszy Polak w kosmosie” (The First Pole in Space), 1978 - one of two 1978 posters by Pągowski in the exhibition; the other is a portrait of the commander of the Soyuz-30 spacecraft, Pyotr Klimuk. The catalogue quotes the artist’s recollection: he made posters with Hermaszewski and with Jankowski, and when Hermaszewski landed, the poster with Jankowski was pulped.
• Borys Okorokow, “Radziecko-polska załoga” (The Soviet-Polish Crew), 1980 - an oil painting of the cosmonauts Pyotr Klimuk and Mirosław Hermaszewski. The catalogue points out that the posters usually show space as a dramatic black void, while Okorokow floods it with bright light.
• Andrzej Pągowski, “Ignis. Pierwsza polska misja na Międzynarodową Stację Kosmiczną” (Ignis: The First Polish Mission to the International Space Station), 2025 - an art print. The museum’s photo report from the opening of the exhibition mentions the Ignis mission poster that flew into orbit with Sławosz Uznański-Wiśniewski.

The exhibition is accompanied by the catalogue “Na podbój kosmosu” (The Conquest of Space), published by Wydawnictwo Muzeum Niepodległości (ISBN 978-83-68378-43-6, print run of 200 copies). Its texts were written by Marta Brodala, the director Katarzyna Legawiec and Małgorzata Karolina Piekarska, head of the Collections Department of the Museum of Independence: a foreword, a text on the space race, and texts on space in the art of the museum’s collection and in Cold War cinema and television. In the foreword, the flight of the first Pole into space holds a special place. The museum makes the catalogue available as a PDF file (in Polish); on 28 October 2026 it was not on sale in the museum’s online bookshop.

Context

The space race was the competition between the United States and the USSR in space exploration, roughly from 1957 to 1975. Mirosław Hermaszewski was the first Pole in space: from 27 June to 5 July 1978 he flew with Pyotr Klimuk aboard Soyuz 30. Sławosz Uznański-Wiśniewski, the second Pole in space and the first Pole aboard the International Space Station, flew on the Axiom 4 mission, launched on 25 June 2025; his experiments belonged to the Polish technology and science mission Ignis. Andrzej Pągowski, a graphic artist and poster designer born in Warsaw in 1953, designed a poster for Hermaszewski’s flight in 1978 and, in 2025, the poster of the Ignis mission.

Tickets and time

• Where: the Poster Gallery, the temporary exhibition room of the Museum of the Tenth Pavilion of the Warsaw Citadel. Directions are on the museum profile.
• Until when: the exhibition runs 22 May 2026 - 29 November 2026. A few days before it ends, the museum is holding a closing event (finissage), listed in the Events section.
• How long: by our editors’ estimate, about half an hour is enough for the 29 objects in the Poster Gallery.
• Before your visit: if you want to know more about the poster artists, you can look through the PDF catalogue beforehand: it describes the works in the exhibition and gives the full list of objects.
• At the same museum: in November the exhibition “Henryk Guterman (1913-1938) - zabity talent” (Henryk Guterman (1913-1938): A Talent Killed) is also on in the Gallery of Historical Painting (Galeria Malarstwa Historycznego), so both exhibitions can be seen on a single visit.
• Who it’s for: people interested in Polish poster art, Cold War propaganda and the history of Poles’ flights into space.
• Who can skip it: anyone looking for space equipment, because the exhibition tells the story of space through posters, graphic art and art.

Events

• 26 November 2026, 13:00 - the closing event of the exhibition (finissage).

Updates

• 2026-10-02 - the museum published the exhibition catalogue (source: catalogue announcement, in Polish).

See also

• Museum of the Tenth Pavilion of the Warsaw Citadel - the profile of the museum in which the exhibition is: what to expect, tips and directions.
• Henryk Guterman (1913-1938): A Talent Killed - an exhibition at the same museum, in the Gallery of Historical Painting, in November.
• Polish Poster. The Collection - Part 3

Museum profile: Museum of the Tenth Pavilion of the Warsaw Citadel.