Open House: The Imagined Object

The exhibition “Open House: The Imagined Object” (Kamienica otwarta: Przedmiot wyobrażony) ran 7 October 2026 - 30 October 2026 at Hipolit House, a branch of the Museum of Krakow, and brought together work by 22 people: invited artists, and students and graduates of the Intermedia Faculty of the Krakow Academy of Fine Arts.

Museum of Krakow on the exhibition (our translation of the museum’s Polish text):

“The Imagined Object” is the second exhibition to come out of the collaboration between the Jan Matejko Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow (Faculty of Intermedia) and the Museum of Krakow (Hipolit House) within the “Open House” series. The reference point for the 2026 exhibition is material culture - surviving objects of everyday use from the collection kept in Hipolit House. They have become a source of inspiration and creative interpretation for invited artists, students and graduates of the Faculty of Intermedia. The exhibition was preceded by several months of consultations and workshops on the meaning and understanding of the value of an everyday object, all the more so one from 100 years ago. The joint work of the two institutions answers the need to make students and the visiting public aware of, and sensitive to, the everyday object, its practical side and its aesthetic dimension. It also places the object in the context of memory, because objects evoke associations and can convey social content, literally or more symbolically.

What to expect

According to the Academy, the artists chose objects from the Hipolit House collection themselves and reinterpreted them. They did not try to restore the objects’ old function; instead they asked how these things can work today.

Among the participants the Academy lists Estera Gałuszka, Mariusz Front, Michał Hyjek and Mariusz Sołtysik. Three of them were also curators of the exhibition.

The opening took place on 6 October 2026 at Hipolit House, the day before the exhibition’s first day; the museum and the Academy give the same date.

Context

The first exhibition in the series, “Kamienica - przestrzeń otwarta” (The House - an Open Space), ran at Hipolit House from 3 to 30 October 2025, almost exactly a year earlier.

The co-organiser was the Intermedia Faculty of the Jan Matejko Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow. Founded in 2011, it is the youngest faculty of a school that was established in 1818 and is the oldest Polish fine art academy. The Academy presented the show as the faculty’s inaugural exhibition and credited its concept to Mariusz Sołtysik, one of the four curators.

The Academy’s text draws on the notion of semiophores, the name that the philosopher and historian Krzysztof Pomian, born in 1934, gave to objects that are material carriers of meaning.

Tickets and time

Ticket: the exhibition had its own ticket, standard, reduced and family; the prices are in the “Tickets and access” box.

Where: at Hipolit House , a branch of the Museum of Krakow; the exhibition page did not say which part of the house it was set up in. The address and directions are on the museum’s profile.

Time needed: this was a temporary exhibition at one branch of the museum, with work by 22 people from one academic community, so about 30-45 minutes was enough to see it.

Who it was for: people who follow the art of the Academy’s Intermedia Faculty, and anyone curious about how contemporary artists reread old objects from a museum collection. Who could skip it: anyone looking for the house’s collection itself, shown as it was once used; here it was the starting point for new work.

After the show

The museum did not extend the exhibition: its newsletter of 26 October gave the same dates, and the Museum of Krakow’s archive of past exhibitions lists it with its dates unchanged.

See also other exhibitions in Krakow:

• The Kitchen From the Inside
• Polish Design: Object Biographies / Designer Biographies
• Citizen Cepelia

Museum profile: Hipolit House .