Love the Vistula

Paintings by Danuta Wierzbicka alongside a collective installation of a model river, wooden boats and ceramic figures - an exhibition about the Vistula, staged inside a 16th-century granary that the river itself paid for.

Vistula Museum on the exhibition (translated from the museum’s Polish text; the museum publishes no English version of this page):

The exhibition “Love the Vistula!” invites you to look at the queen of Polish rivers - through art, imagination and storytelling. It is a meeting of painting and installation which together create an unusual, faintly fairy-tale world bound up with the Vistula and the people who live along it.

Centre stage belongs to Danuta Wierzbicka’s painted visions, in which the river becomes not only a landscape but also the heroine of its own story. The painted story is joined by a world created by local artists: Tomasz Dobrzyński, Anka Piaseczna, Maja Gawlikowska and Hela Dobrzyńska-Suchy. Their joint installation brings an element of play, fantasy and fairy tale into the exhibition space. A model of the Vistula, wooden boats and ceramic figures make up a small, extraordinary world in which the river takes on an almost magical character.

It is precisely this juxtaposition of different artistic forms that makes the exhibition more than a presentation of individual artists’ work. Above all it is a story - about the river, about the places on its banks and about the people whose lives have been tied to its current for generations.

What to expect

The exhibition is at the Natural History Museum, a branch of the Vistula Museum at 54 Puławska Street - not the main building on the Market Square. It opened on 29 August 2026 and the museum gives a single closing date: 15 May 2027. That is unusually long for a temporary show, so there is no rush; on the other hand it will be the only new thing in this branch all winter.

What is on display:

• Paintings by Danuta Wierzbicka - the core of the show, with the Vistula as the main character rather than a backdrop.
• A joint installation by four artists - Tomasz Dobrzyński, Anka Piaseczna, Maja Gawlikowska and Hela Dobrzyńska-Suchy.
• A model of the Vistula, wooden boats and ceramic figures - the physical, three-dimensional part, and the part that stops children in their tracks.

The museum publishes neither a work count nor a room count. Allow 20 to 30 minutes for the exhibition itself, but the Natural History branch is the only one here with multimedia and live exhibits - a glass beehive, an ant colony, an aquarium of Vistula fish, metre-wide ammonites, a mosasaur tooth - so budget 90 minutes for the whole building.

The opening took place on 29 August 2026 at 17:00 as part of the three-day “I Love the Vistula” event (28-30 August), which also included workshops, the Kazimierz regatta and a puppet-theatre performance. The exhibition was co-financed by the Regional Fund for Environmental Protection and Water Management in Lublin.

Context

Kazimierz Dolny was built with money that arrived by river. The Renaissance townhouses and the granaries along the bank are what remains of the grain trade with Gdańsk, and the building housing this exhibition is one of them: the 16th-century Ulanowski Granary. It is hard to imagine a better address for a story about the Vistula than a warehouse that would never have existed without it.

The stretch of river below the town is the Małopolska Vistula Gorge - roughly 80 kilometres of valley running from near Annopol to Puławy, in places 10 kilometres wide, with slopes rising 60 to 70 metres above the water. The river here is largely unregulated, with sandbars, oxbow lakes and islands, and it is protected under two Natura 2000 designations. That makes it rare in European terms: a large lowland river that was never turned into a canal. The exhibition tells its story through art rather than hydrology, but the real thing is 200 metres from the museum door.

Tickets and time

The museum announces no separate exhibition ticket. Admission to the Natural History branch is 18 PLN standard, 13 PLN reduced and 50 PLN family, with 15 percent off for organised groups of 15 or more.

The museum pass (karnet) costs 50 PLN standard and 45 PLN reduced, and its scope is set by the director’s order no. 11/2025 of 31 March 2025, in force since 1 April 2025 (price list, PDF in Polish ): it admits you to all permanent and temporary exhibitions of the Vistula Museum, once to each, and is valid for a year from the date of purchase. Our reckoning from that price list: with the Natural History branch at 18 PLN, the standard pass only starts to pay off at three paid branches, for example with the Goldsmithery Museum and the Kuncewicz House (18 + 18 + 15 = 51 PLN), and saves real money once you add a fourth address, the Celej House (17 PLN). The reduced pass pays off at four branches (13 + 13 + 12 + 10 = 48 PLN). The year’s validity suits a show that runs into May 2027, since you can leave the other branches for a later trip, but the pass gets you into “Love the Vistula” itself only once. Leave the Temporary Exhibitions Gallery out of the sum: a ticket bought at the Goldsmithery Museum or the Celej House gets you in there free anyway.

The free-admission day covers this exhibition too: under the same order (§ 4(2)) it applies to both permanent and temporary exhibitions in all the museum’s branches. The date changes every month. The museum sets it on a rotating basis and announces it on its visitor information page by the last day of the preceding month, as the day of the week that applies that month. On that day only individual visits are allowed; groups must book ahead. Since the show runs into May 2027, another free day will come round every month, so it is worth checking the current one instead of paying by accident.

Opening hours: summer season to 30 September, daily 10:00-17:00; winter season from 1 October to 31 March, daily except Tuesday 9:00-16:00. Ticket sales end 30 minutes before closing. Displays are closed on 1 January, Easter Sunday, 1 and 11 November and on 24 and 25 December - dates that matter here, because this show runs right through the winter.

Who it is for: families with children from about six upwards. The model river, the boats and the ceramic figures hold them better than the canvases do, and the rest of the building supplies multimedia and live exhibits. Who should skip it: anyone hoping for a serious natural-science display on the ecology of the Vistula. This is a painterly, fairy-tale show, not a teaching exhibition.

English on site: the museum runs no English version of its website beyond a machine-translation widget, and states no English labels or audio guide for this exhibition. Opening hours are published bilingually on the museum’s visit page; prices and the free-day rule are in Polish only.

Updates

• 2026-09-30 - The scope of the museum pass is now stated from the director’s order no. 11/2025 (price list, PDF in Polish ): 50 PLN standard, 45 PLN reduced, admission to all permanent and temporary exhibitions of the museum, once to each, valid for a year from purchase. This page previously said that the museum did not specify it.

See also

• Artist of Life. Wiesław Ochman - paintings by the Metropolitan Opera tenor at the Kuncewicz House until 11 November 2026, a ten-minute walk away and run by the same museum.
• Stanisław Fijałkowski. Drawings from Kazimierz - drawings the Łódź painter and printmaker made in Kazimierz shown beside the prints he developed from them, at the Temporary Exhibitions Gallery, Rynek 19, until 30 November 2026.
• Tomek Sikora. To Sit in the Square - photographs of the Kazimierz market square: the same landscape through a lens rather than a brush.
• Vistula Museum in Kazimierz Dolny - the museum profile, listing all five branches, the prices and the permanent natural-history display in the granary.

Museum profile: Vistula Museum in Kazimierz Dolny .