Now their works can be seen in Michigan, at the Gallery of the Polish Institute of Culture and Research in Orchard Lake. The exhibition “The Story of Poland in Posters” is open until May 24, 2026, and tells the story of Poland in a way no textbook can — through lithographs, abstractions, symbols, and colors that were once torn from the walls of Warsaw tenements because people wanted to have them in their homes.
The Poster That Became Art
The Polish School of Posters is one of the most recognizable Polish artistic phenomena in the world — alongside Chopin’s music and Polański’s cinema. Its beginnings date back to the late 19th century, when Stanisław Wyspiański designed a poster for Maeterlinck’s play, combining informational function with symbolism so rich that the work became a piece of art in itself. But the true flourishing occurred in the 1950s and 1960s, when Henryk Tomaszewski and Józef Mroszczak — two founding fathers of the movement — headed poster departments at the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts and trained generations of artists who changed the face of graphic design worldwide.
What happened in communist Poland was unprecedented: in a country where freedom of speech did not exist, the poster became the only legal field of artistic freedom. Censorship controlled books, films, and the press, but the poster — treated by officials as a tool for advertising, not art — escaped control. Artists exploited this loophole and began creating works full of metaphors, irony, and symbolism that told viewers more than a thousand words in an official newspaper. The street became a gallery, and passersby — viewers who could read images better than any art connoisseur in the West.
What You Can See in Orchard Lake
The exhibition “The Story of Poland in Posters” covers works from the late 19th century to the present day and shows how the poster accompanied successive stages of Polish history — from the struggle for national identity during the partitions, through religious iconography, to theater, film, and daily life in the Polish People’s Republic and after the transformation. Among the presented artists are names that every graphic art connoisseur will immediately recognize: Jan Styka — painter of monumental historical panoramas, Stefan Norblin — master of interwar art deco, Waldemar Świerzy — one of the most prolific poster artists in the history of Polish graphic design, Józef Mroszczak — co-founder of the school, and Rafał Olbiński — an artist who brought the Polish poster tradition to New York, where since the 1980s he has collaborated with the School of Visual Arts and created covers for “The New Yorker,” “Time,” and “Newsweek.”
The exhibition curators are Elijah Majeski, Gallery Manager, and Dr. John Radziłowski, Director of the Polish Institute of Culture and Research — a fourth-generation Polish American historian, specialist in Polonia history, and author of numerous publications on the Polish-American experience. Radziłowski took over as director of the Institute in 2022 and has since consistently built an exhibition program that connects Polish art with Polonia identity.
Why Michigan
Orchard Lake Schools in Michigan is one of the most important Polish-American educational and cultural centers in America — a center with over a century of roots, deeply connected to the Catholic tradition of the Polish diaspora. The Polish Institute of Culture and Research, operating within Orchard Lake Schools, serves as a guardian of Polish heritage: it collects archives, works of art, and Polonia memorabilia, organizes exhibitions, lectures, and educational programs aimed at both the Polish diaspora and the broader American public.
A poster exhibition in this location makes particular sense. Michigan’s Polish community — one of the largest and oldest in the United States, with strong centers in Detroit, Hamtramck, and the surrounding areas — consists of people whose grandparents and great-grandparents saw these same posters on the walls of Polish cities before they boarded ships to America. For them, this exhibition is not an art history lesson — it is a visual journey into the world their families left behind.
Practical Information
What: “The Story of Poland in Posters” — an exhibition of Polish poster art from the late 19th century to the present day
Where: Gallery, Polish Institute of Culture and Research, Orchard Lake Schools, Orchard Lake, Michigan
When: Until Sunday, May 24, 2026
Curators: Elijah Majeski, Dr. John Radziłowski
Visiting: During scheduled Gallery events (details on the Institute’s website) or by appointment for a private visit
Contact: [email protected], tel. 248-836-1284
More information: www.picrol.org
Editorial Staff, Głos Polonii w USA
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