Eleanor Antin: A Retrospective

Since the 1970s Eleanor Antin has built much of her art out of characters she plays herself: a king, a ballerina, a nurse. MOCAK will show her retrospective from 5 December 2026 to 21 March 2027 on level 0, the exhibition’s third stop after Luxembourg and Vaduz.

MOCAK on the exhibition (the museum’s own English text):

Eleanor Antin is one of the most important American artists to address feminist themes over the last five decades, and her works are regarded as classics of feminist genre. She hails from the New York conceptual art movement, but has combined its intellectual rigour with a sensitivity to cultural and social issues typical of the West Coast, where she has lived for most of her life. Antin explores themes related to fluid identities, gender and social class. She employs a variety of media, which she combines depending on the nature of the project. These most commonly include: installation, painting, drawing, writing, photography, performance and film.

Antin is a renowned doyenne in the West; her works feature in major collections and art history publications. In Poland, only individual works of hers have been exhibited to date. The exhibition Eleanor Antin: A Retrospective will thus not only be the first comprehensive exhibition of this artist’s oeuvre in our country, but also an opportunity to discover its conceptual richness, closely linked to the avant-garde art that has emerged since the 1960s and continues to this day.

What to expect

The exhibition does not follow a chronology: the curators arrange it by the themes Antin has returned to over half a century. In its exhibition plans MOCAK announces more than 80 works, prepared together with the artist herself, born in 1935. You will see photography, film, installation, drawing and painting, and in many of the works Antin herself plays the lead.

It opens with “100 Boots”, a set of rubber boots the artist arranged over the years outdoors and inside museums. Beyond that, the museum names several works and groups of works:

• “Carving: A Traditional Sculpture” (1972) - according to Wikipedia, 148 photographs of the artist’s naked body on successive days of a month-long crash diet. The museum counts the series among the early works on how culture measures the female body.
• The Ballerina and Florence Nightingale - two roles from works inspired by early cinema: a dancer who challenges the classical ideal of beauty, and the legendary nurse of the Crimean War.
• “Vilna Nights” - a monumental installation with film, devoted to the memory of Europe’s Jews. The Burlington Contemporary’s reviewer described it in Luxembourg as screens set into the windows of a ruined ghetto courtyard.
• Works about women who matter to the artist - intellectuals, artists and researchers. Among them is her mother, an actress in Jewish theatres in pre-war Poland.
• Late, large-format staged photographs - ancient Rome in the aesthetic of Hollywood’s golden age, in which Antin comments critically on today’s United States.

The opening is scheduled for 4 December 2026, but the museum has not yet given its time. It also announces a series of lectures with international experts, so far without dates. It does not say how many rooms the show takes or whether the labels will be bilingual; it does, however, have an English page for the exhibition with the full description.

The Kraków edition is curated by Mirosława Bałazy and Magdalena Ujma. According to the museum it was initiated by Adam Budak, and the exhibition was developed together with Mudam in Luxembourg and the Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein.

Context

Eleanor Antin was born on 27 February 1935 in the Bronx, New York, to Polish Jews who had recently emigrated to the United States. She studied at the City College of New York and trained as an actor. In 1968 she moved with her family to San Diego, where she taught at the University of California for several decades.

Her best-known work, “100 Boots”, was made in 1971-1973 as a series of 51 postcards. Antin photographed the boots in different places and mailed the pictures to hundreds of recipients, and the journey ended with an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. In the 1970s she also made films in which she played invented characters: a king, a ballerina and a nurse.

The retrospective was initiated by Mudam in Luxembourg, which showed it from 26 September 2025 to 8 February 2026 as the artist’s first major survey since 1999. The exhibition then moved to the Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein in Vaduz, where it ran from 27 March to 27 September 2026. Mudam published the book “Eleanor Antin: Works, 1965-2017” for the occasion; MOCAK does not list a catalogue of the exhibition in its publishing plans for 2026.

Tickets and time

• Ticket: there will be no separate one. According to the museum’s practical information (Polish-language page), a ticket admits you to every exhibition in the museum. Standard admission is 30 PLN, reduced 20 PLN, family 65 PLN (up to five people: two adults and three children, or one adult and four). Children under 7 enter free with an adult.
• Thursday is not free here: according to the price list (Polish-language page), free admission covers only the MOCAK Collection on level -1. Temporary exhibitions are sold at the reduced rate that day: 20 PLN instead of 30 PLN, or 15 PLN for those entitled to a concession.
• Discounts: with a ticket from the neighbouring Schindler’s Factory, entry to MOCAK costs 15 PLN. Visitors over 70 pay 5 PLN, and Kraków Card holders get 20% off.
• Hours: Tuesday to Sunday, 11:00-19:00 (11 AM-7 PM), closed on Mondays; the ticket desk sells tickets until 18:30. The museum will be closed on 24, 25, 26 and 31 December and on 1 January 2027. It has not yet published its holiday calendar for 2027, so before a visit on 6 January check the opening hours (Polish-language page).
• Wednesdays after 16:00: quiet hours apply until closing. There are no guided tours or workshops, and works with loud sound or intense light are turned down or switched off. A good time for visitors sensitive to stimuli, though films may then play more quietly.
• Guided tours: in Polish 150 PLN, in English, French or Ukrainian 180 PLN for the first person or family; other participants buy ordinary tickets. Book at least a week ahead with the reception: tel. +48 12 263 40 01, recepcja@mocak.pl .
• Luggage: backpacks, bags, suitcases and umbrellas are not allowed in the exhibition. The lockers take luggage up to 48 × 37 × 48 cm, so a larger suitcase straight from the station may not fit.
• How long: for more than 80 works, films and installations included, allow at least an hour and a half. Add the Collection on level -1 and plan three hours.
• Who it is for: anyone interested in feminist art, performance and staged photography, and in the memory of the Jewish world of Eastern Europe.
• Who can skip it: anyone after a quick look at attractive objects. This is an exhibition of characters, stories and films that asks you to read and watch; you will not get through it in fifteen minutes.
• Getting there: by tram to the Zabłocie stop, eight minutes from Kraków Główny station. The pl. Bohaterów Getta and Limanowskiego stops are also close. The museum has no car park of its own.

What the press says

• Magazyn Szum (31 Aug 2026, editorial team): in its round-up of the autumn’s most interesting exhibitions, the magazine presents the Kraków show as the artist’s first European retrospective and highlights its feminist and conceptual threads. This is a preview, not a review - link (Polish-language source)
• The Burlington Contemporary (28 Jan 2026, Lucy Bradnock): a review of the Mudam edition in Luxembourg. The author welcomes the breadth of the survey but misses its sharpest works on race, among them “Black Movie Star” of 1974. It is not known whether the Kraków selection will be the same - link

No review of the Kraków edition was found before the opening.

See also

• Zofia Kulik. Instead of Sculpture. Footnotes - at MuFo on Rakowicka until 20 December 2026, running for two weeks alongside Antin. Kulik’s 1971 diploma work, in which she traded the chisel for a camera; a year later Antin titled her series of diet photographs “Carving: A Traditional Sculpture”.
• Schindler’s Factory - Histories of the Place - at Oskar Schindler’s Enamel Factory, a few steps from MOCAK, until 8 August 2027. The story of the factory on Lipowa Street, whose former halls now also house MOCAK. A ticket from there brings entry to MOCAK down to 15 PLN.
• MOCAK Museum of Contemporary Art in Krakow - the museum profile: the Collection on level -1, free on Thursdays, hours and how to get to Zabłocie.

Tickets, opening hours, and current details are on the MOCAK website .

Museum profile: MOCAK Museum of Contemporary Art in Krakow .