A View of the Krakowianki - Tola Certowicz

From 14 October 2026 to 3 January 2027, the Museum of Krakow is showing the next instalment of its “A View of the Krakowianki” series at the Krzysztofory Palace, devoted to the sculptor Tola Certowicz. The story is told through her letters from the time she came to Krakow to study, and the whole display is set inside the permanent exhibition “Krakow from the Beginning, Without End”.

The Museum of Krakow on the exhibition (our translation of the museum’s Polish text; the museum has published no English page for this display):

October is the month when women students arrive in Krakow to begin their studies. They walk the same streets that Tola Certowicz walked more than a hundred years ago. Much separates her from today’s students - she lived in quite different times, when it was far harder for women to gain an education and pursue artistic ambitions. Tola was one of the first women to blaze a trail for later generations of women artists.

In the letters she wrote from Krakow we discover the perspective of a young girl beginning a new life in Krakow. Tola shares her daily life, misses her family, makes friends, wonders what studying at the Adrian Baraniecki Higher Courses for Women will be like, is delighted to buy books and to learn drawing, worries about social gatherings and draws up a plan for her day. From these seemingly ordinary notes emerges the story of a young person who discovers not only Krakow but also her own passion and her path as an artist.

What to expect

Don’t look for a room of its own. The museum calls the display an artistic intervention, and its poster announces it as “a route through the permanent exhibition”. You will therefore come across Tola Certowicz along the way, among the objects that tell the city’s history. Since 20 October the same route has also carried a second intervention, with paintings by Anastasiia Kurakova.

The museum gives neither the number of objects nor a list of them. The poster is a collage: a sheet of lined exercise paper covered in handwriting, a cut-out eye and a butterfly. The description on the museum’s page is about letters, not sculpture - anyone hoping to see her work in bronze or marble will find no mention of it in the announcement.

The curator is Patrycja Chelbus-Grudzień. So far the museum has announced no guided tours or talks around this instalment of the series.

Context

Teofila Certowicz, known as Tola, was born in 1862 in Bryckie near Lipowiec, in what is now Ukraine. She lost both parents early; her father, a doctor, was killed in the January Uprising. In Krakow she studied at the Higher Courses for Women founded by Adrian Baraniecki in 1868, where her teacher was the sculptor Marceli Guyski.

She then went to Paris and studied at the Académie Julian, where her friend, the painter Anna Bilińska, was also a student. After her return, from 1897 to 1901, she ran a School of Fine Arts for Women in Krakow, funded from her own dowry. Jacek Malczewski and Włodzimierz Tetmajer taught painting and drawing there, and she herself taught sculpture.

A date shows how far ahead of its time this was: the Krakow Academy of Fine Arts admitted women only in the 1919/1920 academic year. Certowicz did not live to see it - in 1904 she joined the Congregation of Canonesses in Warsaw, and she died in Otwock in 1918. Her sculpture “Morpheus” of 1889 belongs to the National Museum in Krakow; Polish Wikipedia shows it at the entrance to the garden of the Czapski Palace .

“A View of the Krakowianki” (a Krakowianka is a woman from Krakow) is a series of small displays inside the permanent exhibition, each devoted to a different woman of the city. The previous instalment, “The Phenomenon of the Wisla Krakow Women’s Basketball Team”, ran from 1 July to 30 September 2026 and has now closed.

Tickets and time

• Ticket: there is no separate ticket. Admission is covered by the permanent-exhibition ticket: 34 PLN, 29 PLN reduced, 68 PLN family (two adults and two children under 16, or another combination from the price list). If you also want to see the temporary exhibition in the palace, the combined “Bilet Pałacowy” (Palace Ticket) costs 45 PLN, 35 PLN reduced (the museum’s price list, in Polish ).
• Free Tuesday: admission to the permanent exhibition is free on Tuesdays, with tickets at bilety.muzeumkrakowa.pl and at the ticket desk while places last. The museum does not say in so many words that this covers the display, but since you enter it with a permanent-exhibition ticket, the Tuesday ticket should be enough.
• Hours: Tuesday to Sunday, 10:00-18:00; last admission at 17:00, for groups at 16:45. The palace is closed on Mondays and, in the weeks ahead, also on 1 and 11 November and on 24 and 25 December. On 18 December the branch closes at 14:00, and on 31 December the permanent exhibition is open 10:00-15:00. The museum has not yet given its hours for 1 January 2027 - check them before you go.
• How long: allow 90 minutes for the permanent exhibition itself. The letters have to be read, so add at least a quarter of an hour if you are coming specifically for Certowicz.
• December: from 9 December 2026 to 28 February 2027 the same building will also host the 84th Post-Competition Exhibition of Krakow Nativity Scenes (szopki). One visit then gives you both the letters and the szopki; check the admission price for the szopki on the museum’s website.
• Who it is for: students who have just started their studies in Krakow - the museum opens its description of this instalment with them. Also anyone interested in the history of women’s education, and anyone who is visiting the permanent exhibition anyway.
• Who can skip it: anyone who has seen the permanent exhibition recently and has no wish to read letters. In that case one display is not worth a ticket for the whole route.
• Language: the exhibition page exists only in Polish, and the museum does not say whether the letters come with translations.

See also

• Krzysztofory Palace - the permanent exhibition “Krakow from the Beginning, Without End” - the exhibition that houses Tola Certowicz’s letters; you see it on the same ticket.
• Krakow in the Works of Anastasiia Kurakova - the second artistic intervention on the same route, until 31 December 2026: views of today’s city through the eyes of a Ukrainian painter.
• Under a Knitted Sky - Installation - in the same palace, until 26 February 2027: a sunshade made of crocheted squares by Krakow knitters, admission free.
• In the Paris Atelier of Stanisław Wyspiański and Józef Mehoffer - at the Wyspiański Museum, until 31 December 2026: two Krakow artists who, like Certowicz, trained in Paris.

Museum profile: Krzysztofory Palace - Museum of Krakow .