We Wish You a Speedy Recovery - Małgorzata Halber

Małgorzata Halber, a writer and artist who works with found objects, is bringing an installation about illness, convalescence and care for others to the Władysław Hasior Gallery in Zakopane. The Tatra Museum announces it as an artistic residency at its branch at 18 b Jagiellońska Street, running from 27 October 2026 to 27 February 2027. The museum publishes no English text; the passage below is our translation, and the English title is ours too.

Tatra Museum on the exhibition:

One of the most important moments in the history of Zakopane was the town’s gaining the status of a health resort, to which the efforts of Tytus Chałubiński contributed. The Władysław Hasior Gallery is inseparably bound up with this heritage - it occupies the building of the former rest hall of the “Warszawianka” sanatorium, used for the convalescence of patients with lung diseases. In this same building Hasior lived, worked and ran his gallery, and towards the end of his life he himself struggled with health problems.

The artistic residency entitled We Wish You a Speedy Recovery is an installation by Małgorzata Halber, born of a heartfelt need to support others in their difficult moments. In the heart of the sickness season it will restore to Zakopane the memory that health is an important part of the identity of the town, of the biography of every artist and of ourselves.

What to expect

The word “residency” can mislead. On the exhibition page the museum calls the project an installation and lists it among its temporary exhibitions, with an opening and a closing date. Visitors should therefore expect to see Halber’s work in the gallery for four months, not merely to follow it being made. The museum does not say whether the artist will be working on site during that time or whether the installation will change; nor does it give a number of objects, a room or any photographs.

According to the museum’s description, Halber works with found materials and with things nobody wants any more. That suits her host: Hasior built his assemblages and banners from ordinary, often worn-out objects. Halber has previously shown work at, among other venues, the Ethnographic Museum in Wrocław (“Makatka wywrotowa”, 2020, and “Naprawiacze”, 2021).

The opening will take place on Tuesday 27 October 2026 at 17:00, and entry will be free. On Tuesdays the gallery closes at exactly 17:00, so the opening falls after normal visiting hours.

Allow 20-30 minutes for the installation alone; that is our estimate, as the museum gives neither the scale of the work nor a visiting time. Together with Hasior’s permanent display, which Wikipedia puts at about 200 of his works, you need roughly an hour.

Context

Zakopane was officially recognised as a health resort in 1886; from the mid-1870s its climate had been promoted by the physician Tytus Chałubiński. Władysław Hasior (1928-1999), a sculptor regarded as the pioneer of assemblage in Poland, made the former sanatorium rest hall, built in 1935, his gallery, home and studio; the gallery opened in 1985. Halber, born in 1979, was formerly a television presenter, and her novel “Najgorszy człowiek na świecie” (“The Worst Person in the World”, 2015), drawing on her own life, tells of a struggle with alcohol addiction. Her book “Hałas” (“Noise”, Cyranka, 2024) has been made into a VR performance, which the museum says will premiere in December 2026 at the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw.

Tickets and time

Buy the combined ticket: 25 PLN, reduced 12 PLN. It covers both the permanent and the temporary display at the Hasior Gallery. Bought separately, the temporary display costs 10 PLN (reduced 5 PLN) and the permanent one 20 PLN (reduced 10 PLN), so you would pay 30 PLN. The museum does not say in so many words which ticket covers Halber’s installation; but the project is listed among the temporary exhibitions, and the price list on the exhibition page is the Hasior Gallery’s.

The free Thursday applies to permanent exhibitions. The price list on the museum’s website does not mention temporary shows. On our reading you therefore pay for the installation on Thursdays too, while Hasior’s permanent display is free that day. Large Family Card holders pay 5 PLN for all exhibitions in the branch; residents of Zakopane and eight neighbouring municipalities named in the price list pay 1 PLN. A weekly ticket to all open Tatra Museum branches costs 69 PLN (reduced 34 PLN).

Hours: Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday 9:00-17:00 (9 AM to 5 PM), Friday and Saturday 11:00-19:00, closed on Wednesday. Last entry is half an hour before closing. The museum gives the gallery a single timetable with no seasonal change; around 1 November (All Saints’ Day), over Christmas and at New Year, check the hours on the museum’s website before you set off. Mind the day: the main building on Krupówki and the Palace Museum are closed on Monday and Tuesday, when the Hasior Gallery is open; it closes on Wednesday instead.

According to a notice on the branch’s page, access on foot and by car is currently from Piaseckiego Street, and the car park is behind the building, entered from 13 Piaseckiego Street. The price list mentions an audio guide for 5 PLN and a guided tour for 69 PLN, but does not say whether they cover the installation; ask the branch at hasior@muzeumtatrzanskie.pl .

Worth it for Halber’s readers and for anyone heading to Hasior’s gallery anyway: the installation adds to it the theme of health that this building has carried since its sanatorium days. If you want a large exhibition for a whole afternoon, do not make the trip for this alone. Until the museum shows the scale of the work, treat it as part of a visit to Hasior.

English on site: the museum publishes no English description of this project and says nothing about English labels or English-language tours. The price list mentions an audio guide without naming its languages.

Events

• 27.10.2026, 17:00 - opening of the artistic residency, Władysław Hasior Gallery, 18 b Jagiellońska Street, free entry - museum’s announcement, in Polish

See also

• Tatra Museum profile - the main building at 10 Krupówki Street with the permanent display on Podhale culture and Tatra nature, plus the weekly ticket to all branches, the Hasior Gallery included.
• Weś gilaweł / The Forest Is Singing - Małgorzata Mirga-Tas - a contemporary artist at another branch of the same museum, the Palace Museum. Mirga-Tas sews her work from fabrics given by family and friends, and in 2022 she also showed it at the Hasior Gallery.
• Our Legacy. 150 Years since the Founding of the Woodcarving School in Zakopane - an exhibition at the Oksza villa on the school Hasior came from, open until 3 January 2027.

Museum profile: Tatra Museum in Zakopane .