Roots and Sky. The Polish Chapter in the Collection of the Kyiv National Art Gallery

From 26 June to 18 October 2026, the National Museum in Krakow showed paintings by nine Polish artists from the Kyiv National Art Gallery in the Sukiennice’s Malarnia Hall, never before exhibited in Poland.

The National Museum in Krakow on the exhibition:

Established in 1922, the museum holds a rich and diverse collection of approximately fourteen thousand objects, primarily paintings dating from the 13th century to the present day. The core of the Gallery’s holdings is formed by works originating from private Kyiv collections that were nationalised during the Soviet era. Among the most valuable and best-known of these are the collections of the Tereshchenko and Khanenko families, as well as that of Oskar Hansen.

A significant part of the Kyiv National Art Gallery’s collection is formed by works of Polish artists from the 19th and the first half of the 20th century. Although relatively modest in scale, it is of considerable artistic and historical interest. In Poland, however, it has thus far remained largely unknown to the wider public.

The team of the National Museum in Kraków, invited by the Kyiv museum to collaborate on the project, worked with its partners to select works by nine Polish painters. Representing different artistic periods - from early Romanticism to the interwar era - the selected works are strikingly diverse in both stylistic and iconographic terms.

What to expect

The exhibition brought together works by nine painters, previously unseen by the Polish public. They were Aleksander Orłowski (1777-1832), Henryk Siemiradzki (1843-1902), Wilhelm Kotarbiński (1848-1921), Stefan Bakałowicz (1857-1947), Jan Ciągliński (1858-1913), Leon Wyczółkowski (1852-1936), Leon Kowalski (1870-1937), Stanisław Żukowski (1873-1944) and Marian Stroński (1892-1977). The exhibition design was by Anna Popławska-Szilder, with a coordination team of Gabriela Kuleczko, Katarzyna Stolarz, Aleksandra Kłaput, Katarzyna Myszor-Kucmierz and Anastazja Kowalenko.

Museum director Andrzej Szczerski pointed out that several of the names shown are largely forgotten today. He singled out Stefan Bakałowicz, a respected academic painter worth rediscovering through the Kyiv collection, and Marian Stroński, a twentieth-century painter close to post-impressionism and the École de Paris. Wilhelm Kotarbiński spent roughly thirty years of his life in Kyiv, which explains why his work ended up there rather than in a Polish collection.

Context

Most of the painters shown were linked to Ukraine by the subjects of their pictures or by their birthplace, and Kotarbiński worked in Kyiv for nearly 30 years. That is why his paintings entered a Ukrainian collection rather than a Polish one and, like the whole group, remained practically unknown in Poland until this exhibition.

The Kyiv National Art Gallery, founded in 1922, keeps working despite the war. Its historic building was damaged in a Russian missile strike in 2022, yet the gallery carries on and still lends works abroad. Its acting director general, Oksana Pidsucha, said the exhibition was prepared under extreme conditions, during the full-scale war that Russia is waging against Ukraine. The Kyiv museum saw it as a gesture of gratitude to Poland for its support of Ukraine.

Tickets and time

Admission to the exhibition was included in the branch ticket - there was no separate ticket for this show. A standard ticket cost 35 PLN, a reduced one 25 PLN and a family ticket 70 PLN. Pupils and students up to their 26th birthday paid 1 PLN for the permanent exhibitions, and children under 7 got in free. On Tuesdays admission to the museum’s permanent exhibitions was free; the museum did not say whether this also covered the temporary exhibition. The four rooms of the permanent collection together with the exhibition took 60-90 minutes. It was a stop for anyone wanting to see Polish painting through a rarely shown Ukrainian lens, not for visitors looking for multimedia or interactive displays.

What the press says

LoveKraków.pl (26.06.2026, Kinga Poniewozik, in Polish): describes the show as the first exhibition of its kind in Poland and notes it was put together despite the ongoing war, through cooperation between the two museums - link

See also

• Polish Fashion in the MNK Collection - another temporary show within the National Museum network, at Kamienica Szołayskich.
• Satire and Comics by Jan Matejko - Matejko, whose canvases hang permanently in these same Sukiennice galleries.
• Czartoryski Museum - a sister National Museum branch five minutes’ walk from Sukiennice.

After the show

“Roots and Sky” closed on 18 October 2026; the museum did not extend it. No information that the paintings will be shown elsewhere was found on the pages of the National Museum in Krakow or of the Kyiv gallery.

The exhibition was accompanied by a catalogue published by the National Museum in Krakow: 84 pages, paperback, in Polish, Ukrainian and English, ISBN 978-83-7581-490-3. It is sold in the MNK online bookshop (Polish-language page); the regular price is 49 PLN.

The only press report that could be opened and checked was LoveKraków.pl’s article on the opening day, which presented the show as the first of its kind in Poland, put together despite the war. No critical reviews were found, and the museum has published no attendance figures.

The permanent Gallery of 19th-Century Polish Art remains at the Sukiennice. Siemiradzki’s “Nero’s Torches” of 1876 hangs in the Siemiradzki Room, so one of this exhibition’s painters can still be seen there. Among the National Museum in Krakow’s current shows:

• “The Faces of Czapski” at the Main Building, until 31 January 2027 - paintings and drawings by Józef Czapski that are normally held in private collections in Poland and abroad.
• “In the Paris Atelier of Stanisław Wyspiański and Józef Mehoffer” at the Stanisław Wyspiański Museum, until 31 December 2026 - a small display from the years the two shared a Paris studio: Polish painters abroad again.
• “Vincent van Gogh: Country Cottages Among the Trees” at the Main Building, until 31 December 2026 - the only van Gogh in Polish public collections, on loan from the John Paul II Collection.

Museum profile: Sukiennice - Gallery of 19th-Century Polish Art .