After research stays in Florence at Fondazione R. Longhi, and The Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies at Villa I Tatti, he wrote numerous publications about Algardi, Donatello, Lorenzo Lotto, Padovano, Tintoretto, and Titian.
With Jan Białostocki, André Chastel, Hermann Fillitz, W. Roger Rearick and Federico Zeri he founded the IRSA Institute for Art Historical Research in 1979 and became its director.
Grabski founded and became editor-in-chief of the scholarly art history journal Artibus et Historiae in 1980, and the IRSA Foundation for Culture Promotion in 2011.
One of the main missions in the work of Józef Grabski is to promote art, culture and history of Central and Eastern Europe,[2] especially Poland, and throughout the world.
He organized numerous exhibitions in Poland and abroad, for Polish artists such as Alina Szapocznikow, Ryszard Winiarski, Leon Tarasewicz, Jerzy Tchórzewski.