The State of Possession. The Topography of the MOCAK Collection - Part 1

From 24 July to 18 October 2026, MOCAK showed more than one hundred works by 83 artists from its Collection on Level 0, arranged in five chapters of an exhibition about the museum’s own crisis.

MOCAK on the exhibition:

‘Dust thou art, so get up and dust yourself off,’ Rafał Wojaczek pronounces in Lech Majewski’s film, subverting the universally recognised encapsulation of the inevitable human fate. You won’t see the film at the exhibition State of Possession, just as you won’t see many other things. This exhibition is built upon the experience of absence: a lack of time and stability, and above all, a lack of financial resources - a lack resulting from the implosion of the institution’s budget and the depletion of the resources necessary to have carried out the planned activities. We, however - much like Wojaczek in his defiant assertion - are trying to harness this depletion, understood as a crisis, and find new, different models for working on an exhibition that engages with the MOCAK Collection.

In narratives about the museum, the theme of collapse keeps recurring: there is talk of a ‘long-standing crisis’ and a ‘current crisis’, the institution itself is even described as a ruin. In creating the exhibition State of Possession, however, we are attempting to use the term ‘crisis’ on our own terms - to transform it into a tool and a starting point for further narratives and (self-)analysis.

What to expect

The exhibition was divided into five metaphorical chapters - Ruins, Nooks and Crannies, Mudlands, Closets and Cabinets, and Springtimes. Through them it told the story of the Collection and of the institution itself at a moment of upheaval. It was a self-reflective portrait of the museum, prepared by its entire team and coinciding with the fifteenth anniversary of the first exhibition opened to the public at its current premises. The curator was Kamil Kuitkowski. The show occupied Level 0 of the building at ul. Lipowa 4, and some of the works had never been shown to the public before.

Łukasz Gazur, reviewing the show for XYZ.pl, singled out these works:

• Teresa Murak - her piece opened the exhibition in an almost empty room filled with birdsong and the sounds of nature.
• Justyna Smoleń - a clay totem sculpture in the Mudlands chapter, a nod to Zabłocie, the museum’s district, whose name comes from the Polish word for mud (błoto).
• Agata Siwek, “Original Souvenirs Auschwitz-Birkenau” (2002) - a kiosk stocked with Auschwitz souvenirs: striped T-shirts, bags, key rings, sculptures. The work asked how the Holocaust gets turned into merchandise, and it was seen on the grounds of Schindler’s former factory.
• Katarzyna Kozyra, “The Rite of Spring” - the closing work, in which the artist restages Vaslav Nijinsky’s choreography for Igor Stravinsky’s ballet with elderly performers.

In a three-minute film MOCAK published on its own channel, the curator Kamil Kuitkowski talks about the ideas behind the exhibition and about working with the Collection.

Context

MOCAK opened in 2011 in the former Oskar Schindler factory in Kraków’s Zabłocie district and has focused from the start on art made after 1989. The Collection also holds earlier work, though - this show included Janina Turek’s diaries, kept from 1943 to 2000. In recent years the institution has gone through a deep organisational and financial crisis, with two changes of director within eighteen months, widely covered by the cultural press. “State of Possession” was, as its title indicates, the first part of a presentation of the Collection. In it the museum openly confronted that crisis and made it the subject of the exhibition rather than hiding it.

Tickets and time

The exhibition was covered by the ordinary MOCAK ticket: standard 30 PLN, reduced 20 PLN, family 65 PLN. The free Thursday did not include it: free entry applied only to the Collection displays on Level -1, while temporary exhibitions were sold at the reduced rate on Thursdays.

On Wednesdays from 16:00 to 19:00 the museum ran quiet hours, with works that emit loud sound or bright light turned down or off. MOCAK also published the curatorial text and the five chapter introductions in easy-to-read Polish and Polish Sign Language on a separate page , which is still online.

Seeing all five chapters took at least an hour. The show offered most to visitors interested in conceptual art and the condition of museums as institutions, and less to those after a light, crowd-pleasing family exhibition.

What the press says

• LoveKraków.pl (22 Sep 2026, Filip Zapał): a piece on the museum’s way out of its financial crisis. In it, acting director Grzegorz Kuźma presents the exhibition as a project worked out jointly by the staff rather than imposed by a director - link (Polish-language source)
• Magazyn Szum (17 Aug 2026): the art magazine’s listings section runs the museum’s own curatorial text with installation photographs by Rafał Sosin; this is the institution’s material, not a review - link (Polish-language source)
• XYZ.pl (1 Aug 2026, Łukasz Gazur): a review that sees the show’s main strength in its rootedness in the site. It reads the chapters both as metaphors and as a map of Zabłocie and Schindler’s former factory. The author credits the museum for making its crisis the subject instead of hiding it - link (Polish-language source)
• LoveKraków.pl (23 Jul 2026, Filip Zapał): a preview published the day before the opening, placing the show against the dismissal of two directors and the museum’s money problems. The piece describes it as an attempt to treat crisis as a starting point for change - link (Polish-language source)

By the time the show closed there had been one review (XYZ.pl), and it was favourable; the other pieces are a preview, the museum’s own text and a report on the institution.

Updates

• 18 Oct 2026 - the exhibition closed on the announced date, with no extension; on 21 October 2026 MOCAK already lists it in the archive on its exhibitions page .
• 13 Oct 2026 - exhibition dates (24 July - 18 October 2026) confirmed on the MOCAK website, with no extension. The museum announced a closing guided tour of the show in English on 18 October at 12:00.
• 7 Oct 2026 - exhibition dates (24 July - 18 October 2026) confirmed again on the MOCAK website. The museum announced a family walk on 11 October and a closing tour with the curator on 18 October, and moved the workshop “You Won’t Learn This from AI” from 3 to 10 October.
• 22 Sep 2026 - dates (24 July - 18 October 2026) confirmed on the MOCAK website. Added the event dates up to 17 October 2026, the works named in the XYZ.pl review, the Thursday admission rule (the free Thursday does not cover this show) and the Wednesday quiet hours. Corrected the description of two earlier press items: the Magazyn Szum piece is the museum’s own curatorial text, and the LoveKraków.pl article of 23 July 2026 is a preview, not a review.
• 13 Sep 2026 - added the curator (Kamil Kuitkowski), practical ticket and opening-hours information, and a press round-up, based on the MOCAK website and two reviews. The exhibition dates (24 July - 18 October 2026) are unchanged - no source confirmed an extension.

See also

• MOCAK Collection displays on Level -1 - the museum’s standing presentation of the holdings “State of Possession” was built from; entry to them is free on Thursdays.
• Oskar Schindler’s Enamel Factory - the Museum of Krakow branch in the neighbouring building on Lipowa Street. It suits readers whom the XYZ.pl review made curious about the show’s roots in the history of this site.

After the show

“State of Possession” closed on 18 October 2026. For the last day MOCAK announced a closing tour with the curator as part of the Fort Sztuki 3026 programme and the last open guided tour in English. The museum has not yet announced a second part of “The Topography of the MOCAK Collection”: on 21 October 2026 neither the exhibition page nor the list of upcoming shows mentions one. Nor was any information found that the show will travel elsewhere.

No catalogue of the exhibition was found: the “Publishing plans 2026” in the museum’s press kit list other titles. The exhibition page with the curatorial text and the film with the curator remain available in MOCAK’s archive .

The only review was published by Łukasz Gazur in XYZ.pl, who saw the show’s main strength in its rootedness in Zabłocie and Schindler’s former factory. The LoveKraków.pl portal wrote about it mainly in the context of the museum’s financial crisis; no attendance figures were found.

Until 31 October 2026 MOCAK is showing “Fort Sztuki 3026” - the archive of Kraków’s Fort Sztuki association spread across the museum’s spaces, with film screenings and performances. The museum announces its next temporary exhibition, “Eleanor Antin: A Retrospective” , for Level 0, from 5 December 2026 to 21 March 2027.

Other exhibitions in Kraków take up threads of “State of Possession”:

• “Schindler’s Factory - Histories of the Place” - next door on Lipowa Street, the Museum of Krakow tells the story of the ground MOCAK stands on, from industrial Zabłocie to “Telpod” and “Solidarity”.
• “I Was Tadeusz Kantor’s Assistant. Andrzej Wajda” - Cricoteka shows documents from the film version of “The Dead Class”; Kantor was one of the artists included in “State of Possession”.
• “Zofia Kulik. Instead of Sculpture. Footnotes” - MuFo on Rakowicka Street shows the 1971 diploma work of a leading figure of the Polish neo-avant-garde, for those drawn to the conceptual art at MOCAK.

Museum profile: MOCAK Museum of Contemporary Art in Krakow .