Wild Frolics. An Exhibition for All

From 11 March to 11 October 2026, Cricoteka showed “Wild Frolics”, an exhibition of five spaces for drawing, dressing up and making music, which children and adults explored together, with their shoes off.

Cricoteka on the exhibition (our translation of the museum’s Polish text; the museum’s English page for the show does not carry this passage):

The exhibition is made up of five open spaces designed by artists, where you can draw, dress up, compose sounds, play with scale, light and shadow, and test your own ideas without fear of making a mistake. It was created together with children, in keeping with their needs and their boundless imagination.

What to expect

Instead of display cases, there were stations for doing things. The five spaces were made by artists: the duo Marta Sala and Cheong Kin Man (huge costumes to dress up in), Joanna Bronisławska (suitcases full of sounds) and Justyna Mędrala (a drawing challenge). The other two were a fabric base by Justyna Mazur-Kiwer and a work by Bartek Buczek built on unpredictable movement. The curators, Justyna Droń and Anna Grajewska, started with workshops for children aged 6 to 12 and then handed the finished prototypes back to the children to test. Hence the deliberate break with the split between a “kids’ corner” and the rest of the museum: adults played here by the same rules as children.

From 7 July to 13 September 2026, Galeria Szatnia also hosted “Wild Frolics. Annex”, a small exhibition on how “Wild Frolics” came about: the workshops, the choice of artists and the children’s part in it. Anyone with a “Wild Frolics” ticket got into the annex free.

Context

Cricoteka documents the art of Tadeusz Kantor, the creator of Cricot 2 Theatre and the mind behind the “anti-exhibition” - a show the visitor does not just look at but physically disturbs. “Wild Frolics” drew directly on that idea and paired it with Maurice Sendak’s “Where the Wild Things Are”, a story about a child’s imagination taming chaos through play. The exhibition was therefore a counterweight to the more contemplative permanent display “Kantor. Terapia widzeń” in the same building. No works by Kantor himself were shown in “Wild Frolics”.

Tickets and time

A standard ticket cost 25 PLN, a reduced one 15 PLN, and a family ticket (2 adults and 3 children, or 1 adult and 4 children) 60 PLN. The “Wild Card” for 67 PLN covered five visits; it was not tied to a name, so several people could share it, but it was sold only at the ticket desk. The exhibition was open Tuesday to Sunday, 11:00-19:00, with last entry at 18:45.

Cricoteka’s price list gave free Wednesdays to the permanent exhibition “Kantor. Terapia widzeń”, not to “Wild Frolics”. A combined ticket for the permanent and the temporary exhibition cost 40 PLN (reduced 20 PLN) instead of 50 PLN for two separate ones. Kraków Card holders paid the reduced price for a standard ticket.

No more than 50 people could be in the exhibition at once, and the museum warned of weekend queues. You went round in your socks, since shoes came off inside. The show was built for families with children; anyone after quiet and contemplation was better served by the permanent exhibition, because movement, sound and shared play were the point here.

Visitors with disabilities bought a reduced ticket and their assistant entered free. Every one of the five installations had instructions in Braille, and the layout left room for a wheelchair to move freely. The museum wrote the simple instructions at the works in Polish; it gave no information on English labels, an audio guide or English tours for this show.

What the press says

RMF24 (12 March 2026, Renata Gaweł): covers the opening as a space where children are finally allowed to touch and play with the exhibits, quoting curator Justyna Droń - informative, favourable tone - link

Polskie Radio Trójka (11 March 2026): stresses that the exhibition was made together with children, not just for them - informative tone - link

Magiczny Kraków / krakow.pl (2 March 2026), the city’s official portal: notes that the exhibition deliberately removes the divide between a children’s corner and the rest of the museum - informative tone - link

No critical review was found in cultural outlets (Dwutygodnik, Magazyn Szum); every piece found covers the opening.

Updates

• 2026-09-13 - added ticket prices, the five spaces’ designers, and the upcoming audio-description session; dates and scope of the exhibition unchanged from the earlier entry.

• 2026-09-22 - dates (11 March - 11 October 2026) and prices re-checked on Cricoteka’s pages: unchanged. Added the 50-person limit, last entry time, Wild Card terms, the free-Wednesday position, accessibility and on-site language; past events removed from the list; the Cricoteka quotation replaced with a verbatim passage from the exhibition page (sources: exhibition page , price list ).

• 2026-10-11 - the exhibition closed as announced; Cricoteka’s website now lists it among its archived exhibitions (source: exhibition page ).

See also

• Cogiteon Małopolska Science Centre - hands-on exhibitions under one roof, all year round: Akademia Dzieci for the youngest and a permanent exhibition for children aged 10 and over.
• World of Little Technicians - a compact collection of more than 800 LEGO Technic sets with a workshop room; you can see it all in an hour.

After the show

“Wild Frolics” closed on 11 October 2026, after seven months. Cricoteka gives no sign that the show will travel. No catalogue was found, either on the exhibition page or in Cricoteka’s shop.

The museum filled the last eleven days, 1 to 11 October, with a programme called “The last 11 days of Wild Frolics”. It included workshops for teachers, an intergenerational reading of Sendak’s book and sessions for Deaf and hearing children. The show closed on 11 October with “Perkumania”, a one-man concert by Jonasz Kler.

The press wrote about the exhibition at its opening: RMF24 stressed that children were allowed to touch the exhibits and play with them, and Polskie Radio Trójka that the show was made together with children. Cricoteka and the European Museum Academy announced that “Wild Frolics” was shortlisted for the Children in Museums Award 2026, alongside Berlin’s Alice: Museum für Kinder and Warsaw’s POLIN, among others. No result of the award was found, and no attendance figures either.

Now on at Cricoteka:

• “I Was Tadeusz Kantor’s Assistant. Andrzej Wajda” - in Galeria Szatnia until 10 January 2027: documents from Wajda’s work on the film version of Kantor’s “The Dead Class”.
• “Andrzej Pawłowski. Kineforms” - at Tadeusz Kantor’s Gallery-Studio on Sienna Street: Pawłowski’s moving light images from the 1950s, also linked to the Cricot 2 stage.

The permanent exhibition “Kantor. Terapia widzeń” shows the Kantor objects that “Wild Frolics” left out. Cricoteka’s price list announces the next temporary exhibition for 19 November 2026: “Duchy i krajobrazy / Ghosts & Landscapes” by Philippe Quesne.

For families with children beyond Cricoteka:

• “Art and Trade. Krakow of Craftsmen” - Krzysztofory Palace, until 25 October 2026: Trudzia the mouse guides children round the exhibition, and a task card gives the visit a structure.
• “Open House: The Imagined Object” - Hipolit House, until 30 October 2026: artists from the Faculty of Intermedia at the Academy of Fine Arts work with old everyday objects. A family session with stop-motion animation takes place on 25 October.

Museum profile: Cricoteka .