48 Hours in Warsaw: The Cultivist Edit

Earlier this summer, Cultivist members spent three days getting beneath the surface of Warsaw’s art scene, moving between the city’s major institutions and the private spaces that are typically much harder to access.

Highlights ranged from a curator-led visit to the Museum of Modern Art and private collection visits with Tomasz Pasiek and Paweł Prokesz, to the studios of Karolina Bielawska and Linda Lach. Members were also given rare access to the studio of the late Wanda Czełkowska. Further visits took in the Stefan Gierowski Foundation, the Starak Family Collection and some of Warsaw’s most interesting independent galleries, with opportunities throughout to meet the collectors, curators and artists shaping the city’s cultural landscape.

If you’re heading to Warsaw, here’s our essential guide to 48 hours in Poland’s vibrant capital.

Day One: Warsaw’s Contemporary Centre

9.30am: Breakfast at Charlotte Menora

Start on Próżna Street, one of the few streets in the former Jewish district to survive the war. Charlotte Menora takes its cues from the traditional Jewish bakery, with challah, rugelach, freshly baked bread and an easy breakfast menu. It is also less than a ten minute walk from your first art stop.

11am: Museum of Modern Art

Be there as the doors open. Warsaw’s new Museum of Modern Art only opened its permanent home in 2024, and the stark white Thomas Phifer building has quickly become one of the city’s essential cultural stops.

Our members saw Julie Mehretu here with curator Szymon Żydek. For visitors now, head instead to Edward Dwurnik: Pride and Shame, which focuses on the painter’s work of the 1970s and 1980s. Look out for An Embarrassment of Riches (1975), a sprawling oil and acrylic canvas that captures Dwurnik’s sharp eye for the absurdities of everyday social life. The exhibition runs until 28 February 2027.

1pm: Fundacja Galerii Foksal

From the museum, continue through the city centre to Foksal Gallery Foundation. The programme changes regularly, so check what is on before you go, but it is an important stop for understanding the more experimental side of Warsaw’s contemporary art scene.

Foksal Gallery Foundation

2pm: Lunch at Miedzy Nami Restaurant & Night Bar

Take a break at Między Nami on Bracka Street, also one of our stops during the Cultivist trip, before continuing on foot.

4pm: Fundacja Stefana Gierowskiego

The Foundation is dedicated to one of Poland’s most important postwar abstract painters, but its exhibitions deliberately place Gierowski in conversation with artists working today. Through 18 October, Aether Commons: Refracted Cosmologies brings his paintings together with work by El Anatsui, Olafur Eliasson, Mona Hatoum, William Kentridge, Esther Mahlangu and others.

Evening: Dinner at Warszawa Wschodnia

Finish the day across the Vistula at Mateusz Gessler’s Warszawa Wschodnia, set inside the former industrial complex at Soho Factory. The menu combines Polish cooking with French influences, and it was where we ended the first evening of our Warsaw trip.

Day two: Collections, Polish Masters and The Other Side of The River

8.30am: Breakfast at Café Bristol

Begin along Krakowskie Przedmieście at Café Bristol. Open since 1901, the Viennese style café is one of Warsaw’s old school institutions. Order coffee, something from the patisserie and take your time before heading south.

10am: Spectra Art Space

The Starak Family Foundation’s public exhibition space offers one of the best introductions to private collecting in Poland. Its programme draws heavily on Anna and Jerzy Starak’s collection of Polish postwar and contemporary art.

Currently, a major exhibition focuses on Edward Krasiński, one of the defining figures of the Polish avant-garde. It runs until 1 November 2026 and admission is free.

12.30pm: Zachęta

Head back into the centre for Zachęta, Warsaw’s National Gallery of Art. Beyond the exhibitions, leave time for its excellent art bookshop. If visiting before 20 September, Adolescence explores vulnerability, shame and the unstable territory between childhood and adulthood. Otherwise, check the gallery’s changing programme before your trip.

Exhibition Adolescence, Zachęta. National Gallery of Art. 

3.30pm: Cross the river to Galeria Wschód

Spend the late afternoon in Warsaw’s independent gallery scene. Wschód is one of the spaces we visited privately with founder Piotr Drewko, and its programme is a useful counterpoint to the larger institutions. Smaller in scale, experimental and closely connected to the artists shaping the city now, it is well worth the journey across the river.

From here, stay east of the river for dinner, or make your way back into the centre for a final drink.

Go further with The Cultivist

Our 48 hour edit will get you started. Our members’ trip went further, inside private collections, into artists’ studios and behind the exhibitions with the people who made them happen.

Discover upcoming Cultivist art trips and Club Membership here!