Eiko Ishioka. Who Am I?

The Manggha Museum will show nearly 80 posters by Eiko Ishioka from 11 November 2026 to 17 January 2027. Ishioka was the Japanese art director who won an Oscar for the costumes in Coppola’s “Bram Stoker’s Dracula”. The exhibition will be limited to posters and covered by the museum’s ordinary ticket.

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

The posters created by the art director Eiko Ishioka are meticulously considered compositions, most often made in photographic technique, but also illustrative works, for which she invited outstanding artists. In the posters on show, visitors will be able to see the creative energy that went into the making of each work, each carrying a strong, personal message from its author.

All the works come from the collection of the Poster and Design Gallery of the National Museum in Poznań, which acquired archival copies from the years 1968-1993 for its holdings.

What to expect

The museum bills the show as the first presentation of Ishioka in Poland and deliberately narrows it to a single field. Television campaigns, album covers, stage sets and costumes stay out of the room; you will see posters only. The museum has not yet named the gallery or the curator. The opening is scheduled for 10 November 2026 at 18:00, but the museum has so far published no invitation and no event in its calendar.

The museum names several groups of works:

• Campaigns for PARCO - the department-store chain Ishioka worked for from 1973. Among them are “Don’t stare at the nude, be naked” and “Girls, be Ambitious!” (both 1975), “Nightingale Sings for No One but Herself” (1976) and “Dressed to kill and no place to go” (1980).
• The illustrated series “Very Parco” (1983) - a change from the photography that dominates the other posters.
• Film posters - Luchino Visconti’s “The Innocent”, Godfrey Reggio’s “Koyaanisqatsi”, and Francis Ford Coppola’s “Apocalypse Now” and “Dracula”. According to Wikipedia, her poster for the Japanese release of “Apocalypse Now” opened the way to her later work with Coppola.
• Advertising and fashion - posters for the cosmetics company Shiseido, where Ishioka began her career, for the Diana brand and for the publisher Kadokawa Shoten, and work for Issey Miyake’s fashion shows.

The campaign slogans the museum lists are in English. The museum does not say, however, whether the labels in the exhibition will be bilingual, and it has no English page for this show yet.

Context

Eiko Ishioka (1938-2012) was born in Tokyo to a commercial graphic designer and graduated from the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music. According to Wikipedia, she joined the advertising division of Shiseido in 1961 and four years later won Japan’s most prestigious advertising award. The museum adds that she was the first woman to receive the Japan Advertising Artists Club Award.

In 1980 she moved to New York and from then on also worked for theatre, film and music. Wikipedia lists a special award for artistic contribution at Cannes for her production design on Paul Schrader’s “Mishima” (1985) and a Grammy for the cover of Miles Davis’s album “Tutu”. She is best known, though, for the Oscar for the costumes in the 1992 “Dracula”. She also designed costumes for Tarsem Singh’s films, for Cirque du Soleil and for the opening ceremony of the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

The world’s first large-scale retrospective of her work was shown by the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo (MOT) at the turn of 2020 and 2021. The Krakow exhibition is narrower: it covers a single field, but the one where Ishioka started and made her name.

Tickets and time

There will be no separate ticket: according to the museum’s price list, a ticket admits you to all current exhibitions. Regular admission is 30 PLN, reduced 20 PLN, family 50 PLN (up to four people, at least one of them a child under 18). Children under 7 go free, and the museum accepts the Large Family Card (Karta Dużej Rodziny) and the Karta “N”.

Admission is free on Tuesdays, and the museum’s ticket page states that the free Tuesday covers all temporary exhibitions. The museum is open Tuesday to Sunday, 10:00-18:00 (10 AM-6 PM) and closed on Mondays. Last entry is half an hour before closing. On 11 November, the opening day and a public holiday in Poland, the museum will keep its usual hours, 10:00-18:00.

Hours change over the holidays: on 24 and 31 December the museum will be open 10:00-14:00, and it will be closed on 25 December and 1 January. The museum has not yet announced its other hours for 2027, so before a visit on 6 January check the museum’s practical information (Polish-language page).

The museum releases online tickets for each month in the last week of the month before. Tickets for November will therefore appear at the end of October, and for January at the end of December. Guided tours must be booked at least 10 days in advance.

Allow 45-60 minutes for nearly 80 posters. If you come on 11 November, the same ticket will still cover the last day of “The Island of Dragonflies” and “Warrior Women”; allow two and a half hours for all three. From 29 November the museum announces its next exhibition, “Szepty deszczu, cisza śniegu. Kawase Hasui” (Whispers of Rain, Silence of Snow), which you can see on the same ticket.

The show is best for anyone working in graphic design, advertising or design, and for film lovers who know the posters for Coppola’s films. If you are hoping for the costumes from “Dracula”, you will not find them: the museum announces posters only.

The museum stands at ul. Konopnickiej 26, on the bank of the Vistula opposite Wawel. The nearest tram and bus stops are called Rondo Grunwaldzkie.

Events

• 18 Nov 2026, 16:00-18:00 - “quiet hours” at the museum: individual visits only, no groups or guided tours, sound-emitting devices in the buildings switched off. Noise-cancelling headphones can be borrowed at the main-building reception (limited number) - details (Polish-language page)
• 16 Dec 2026, 16:00-18:00 - another session of “quiet hours” on the same terms - details (Polish-language page)

See also

• Polish Design: Object Biographies / Designer Biographies - at Bunkier Sztuki until 13 December, running for a month alongside Ishioka: sixteen names and studios of contemporary Polish design. For anyone who wants to see the designer as an author rather than an anonymous maker.
• Citizen Cepelia - in the National Museum’s Main Building until 21 February 2027: from kilims to posters and publications, that is, how one institution decided for four decades of communist Poland what “folk” looked like on a shop shelf.
• Moda Polska (Polish Fashion) in the Collection of the National Museum in Krakow - at the Szołayski House until 13 June 2027: garments by Kalina Paroll, Magda Ignar and Jerzy Antkowiak from the same decades in which Ishioka made her campaigns for PARCO.
• Manggha Museum of Japanese Art and Technology - the museum profile: Arata Isozaki’s building, the Feliks “Manggha” Jasieński collection, hours and how to get there.

Tickets, opening hours, and current details are on the Manggha Museum website (Polish-language page).

Museum profile: Manggha Museum of Japanese Art and Technology .