Uměleckoprůmyslové museum v Praze

Exhibition curators: Mgr.Martina Lehmannová and PhDr. Markéta Grill Janatová
Exhibition design: Ing. Dušan Seidl
Exhibition graphics: Ateliér Colmo, Miroslav Roubíček
Partnership: University Museum of Bergen, Hana Lukešová

The Museum of Decorative Arts has in its keeping one of this country´s largest collections of textiles. While its key part is constituted by articles of clothing and fashion accessories, an equally relevant place in the collection is occupied by an array of items including fifty Renaissance and Baroque tapestries, and several hundred liturgical vestments and textiles the earliest of which date from Middle Age.

These two large groups of items were subjected to scrutiny with a view to selecting damaged textile articles fit for incorporation into the project Historical Tapestries and Textiles from the Collection of the Museum of Decorative Arts in Prague – Conservation and Preservation, which recevied funding from the EEA and Norway. The offer of partnership in the project was generously accepted by the University of Bergen, represented by Hana Lukešová, conservator of textiles at the University Museum of Bergen.

In the period from 2015–2017, funding extended under this project made possible the conservation of a total of nine historical tapestries, an embroidered screen, and eleven miscellaneous types of liturgical vestsments and textiles, which are now being made accessible to the general public at the present exhibition. Within foreseeable future some of these items will alsobecome part of the museum´s upcoming permanent exhibition.

The entire conservation process was carried out in workshops of independent art restorers. Thanks to the keen endeavours of the museum´s own team of textile restorers, and with the funding that hase made possible collaboration with private restoration workshops, the Museum of Decorative Arts has been able to meet its goals in taking the requisite care of its extensive and valuable collection.

Commissioner: Museum of Decorative Arts in Prague

Director: Helena Koenigsmarková

Curator: Iva Knobloch

Funding: Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic

Support: Czech Center Milan, Gallery Zdeněk Sklenář Prague

Out of Power Tower: artist Krištof Kintera and team

Lithopy: concept Denisa Kera and Petr Šourek, director Petr Šourek, designer Eva Holá, photography Jan Hrdý, editor Miloslav Holman, installation and 3D print Jaroslav Svítek,  blockchain development Denisa Kera and Yair Reshef, satellite image processing Mateusz Kraiński and team

XXII Triennale Milano

From March 1 to September 1, 2019 XXII Triennale Milano titled Broken Nature: Design Takes on Human Survival. The curatorship of the XXII Triennale has been entrusted to Paola Antonelli, Senior Curator of Architecture and Design and Director of Research & Development at The Museum of Modern Art. The curatorial team, led by Paola Antonelli and based in Milan and New York, will select and present design approaches that encourage a multifaceted and comprehensive reading of the issues threatening our collective existence; stimulate an appreciation of the systems in which individuals live and operate; and galvanize attitudes that consider life beyond the next few generations.

The XXII Triennale will feature projects – from objects to buildings, and from interfaces to infrastructures and cities, at all scales, from the cosmos to the microbiome, and in all dimensions – that suggest plausible and concrete avenues for restorative design action In this ambitious endeavor, the curatorial team will be supported by an Advisory Committee of scholars and practitioners, including Adam Bly, Rania Ghosn, Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg, Gabriella Gómez-Mont, Jamer Hunt, Sarah Ichioka, Koyo Kouoh, Stefano Micelli, and Maholo Uchida. 

Czech Participacion

The utopian/dystopian projects OUT OF POWER TOWER and LITHOPY develop the theme of energy wastage and mock the current craze for cryptocurrency. They are a critical response to the problem of mineral extraction, scarcity of resources and man’s drive for endless energy production. Out of Power Tower is 4,5 m high object made from used batteries that are assembled and cut. From the outside, the batteries seduce the consumer with their shining mosaic of brands. Inside the batteries, you can observe dark and burned out minerals. Out of Power Tower is a metaphor of the 4.0 and 5.0 Ages: uncovering the happy comfort of the external superficiality of being; digging deep under it, you find its core, dangerous and toxic. LITHOPY tells a universal story of power, mineral resources, technology and man. It is a fiction  in the form of a multi-screen movie backed by blockchain prototypes. As a matter of fact, one of the largest world Lithium reserves has been recently rediscovered in the Czech Lands and were quickly turned into a mobilizing tool during 2017 elections. As a response to the populist promise and the ongoing speculation in Lithium, the Lithopy team created its own fairy-tale scenario. The movie advertises a Sunny Day in Lithopy when all kinds of smart contracts are made under controlling eyes of satellites.

Exhibition held to commemorate 80 years since the introduction of the Nuremberg Laws in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia

Eighty years ago, on 21 June 1939, the Reich Protector Konstantin von Neurath issued a decree introducing the Nazis’ Nuremberg Laws in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. This ushered in a period of social and property-related persecution of people who were classified as Jews – persecution which in the vast majority of cases culminated in their deportation to concentration and extermination camps, where the deportees ultimately died.

To commemorate 80 years since the establishment of the Protectorate, the introduction of the Nuremberg Laws and the outbreak of the Second World War, an exhibition of items belonging to victims of the Nazi persecution has been organized by the Documentation Centre for Property Transfers of the Cultural Assets of WW II Victims, in collaboration with the Museum of Decorative Arts in Prague, the National Heritage Institut, Area Heritage Administration at castle Sychrov and the National Gallery Prague.

The organizing institutions have decided to display items whose original owners have been identified. The items commemorate the names and lives of their owners – victims of a despotic system which, based on arbitrary criteria, destroyed real human beings (replacing their names with transport numbers) in order to seize their property. These items help – at least partially – to restore their original owners’ identity.

In the large majority of cases, the owners were not collectors in the true sense of the word; they were simply people who had these items in their homes. They lived alongside the items, and they had some kind of personal connection with them. On the other hand – and this is particularly important – the fact that these items have survived means that we have been able to identify the names of their original owners, despite the fact that from autumn 1941 onwards the authorities systematically used transport numbers instead of actual names. The exhibition presents around a hundred named original owners – and of course this is just a tiny fraction of the total number of Protectorate Jews who were murdered during the war. Yet although they are few, it is of profound importance that we remember and commemorate them. Each of these people was unique; each lived their own individual life. Among them were the rich and the poor, factory-owners and small traders, university professors and people with just a basic education, married and unmarried, divorced and widowed, those with families and those who lived alone. Some of them had lived in Czechoslovakia throughout the inter-war period, while others had returned there after living Germany or Ostmark (Austria). Many of them had fled into “rump” Czechoslovakia from the Sudetenland when it was seized by Germany following the Munich Agreement; after finding an apartment or a rented room, they were forced to move once more and live with another Jewish family, as the German authorities had issued a decree that all Jews should be removed from the part of Prague on the left bank of the Vltava River. Of course, this decree was targeted mainly at the owners of villas and apartment blocks in these districts of the city. They inevitably had to leave behind large amounts of their property in their abandoned homes, and today there is absolutely no way of locating this property; it was evidently taken by Reich citizens who moved into the vacated homes in large numbers (or also by Reich institutions, in the case of large villas). The names of the original owners a mother of young children, whose husband was executed for his political resistance activities shortly before the family’s planned deportation. There is also a young woman who was placed on a transport with her parents just a week after her wedding, still listed under her maiden name; her adoring husband voluntarily joined the next transport in order to remain with his wife until their death.

For these reasons, the items presented here are not valuable merely as museum exhibits; above all, their value lies in the fact that they silently commemorate the lives of their original owners, who are long dead. After many years, these items have helped us to restore these original owners’ names and identities.

Exhibition concept and curator: Konstantina Hlaváčková

Exhibition design, videos: Pavel Mrkus

Graphic design: Štěpán Malovec and Kristina Ambrozová

Zika and Lida Ascher’s personal and professional story began in Prague just before World War II and continued in London and Paris, where they worked with the most famous artists of the day and where the most exclusive fashion houses used Ascher fabrics for their creations.

Czechoslovakia before World War II was a country with a highly developed textile industry and an extensive sales network, including two shops owned by Zikmund and Jindřich Ascher that sold silks not far from Wenceslas Square. The younger generation of the Ascher family included Zika (Zikmund) Ascher, who was born in 1910. In 1933 he and his older brother Josef opened their own shop selling textiles in the centre of Prague, and it soon became very popular. Zika Ascher was also a very successful Alpine skier. He represented Czechoslovakia in many international competitions, and in 1938 he won the Czechoslovak Grand Prix. The press dubbed him the “Mad Silkman” on account of his daredevil style on the slopes.

In February 1939 Zika married Lida (Ludmila) Tydlitátová, a charming young woman from a wealthy family in Prague. Just a few days before the Nazis invaded Czechoslovakia on 15 March 1939, Lida and Zika left for Norway on their honeymoon. From there they went to London, which they made their new home. Zika joined the army, and in 1942 he and Lida founded a textile company that printed fabrics for women’s clothes. The high quality of its designs and printing guaranteed the company’s success right from the start.

During and shortly after the war Zika Ascher put a bold plan into action: he asked leading artists of the time – Henri Matisse, Henry Moore, André Derain, Cecil Beaton, Alexander Calder and many more – to come up with designs for luxurious silk scarves and fashion fabrics. Most of them agreed, resulting in a collection of approximately thirty wonderful silk scarves, the Ascher Squares, that helped launch Zika and Lida’s glittering career. The Squares were exhibited around the world and at the end of 1947, shortly before the communists seized power, they were shown at Mánes in Prague alongside printed textiles designed by Czech artists.

Zika and Lida continued working with famous artists for many more years, establishing good working relationships and personal friendships, as can be seen in their frequent correspondence. Artists and fashion designers valued Zika’s remarkable ability to flawlessly render their designs in fabric. Printed silks and cottons and various types of woollen fabrics from Ascher (London) Ltd. created a sensation around the world. Zika was also a great innovator of new textiles, and he became legendary for his revolutionary approach and the way he brought design and fine art together. Ascher fabrics were immensely popular from the 1940s to the 1980s and they frequently appeared in all the top fashion magazines, including Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar. The most famous designers and fashion houses in France, Italy and Britain used Ascher fabrics in their collections: Christian Dior, Chanel, Balenciaga, Lanvin-Castillo, Pierre Cardin, Yves Saint Laurent, Alberto Fabiani, Ronald Paterson, Mary Quant, David Sassoon …

Lida Ascher died in London in 1983, followed by Zika nine years later. They were among the most illustrious Czechs and their work was celebrated around the world, but back home they were entirely forgotten.

The exhibition has been designed by the artist Pavel Mrkus, who works with large audiovisual installations.

Most of the exhibits have been lent by the Ascher Family Archive in the United States. Other items come from Manchester Art Gallery, the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, and Musée Matisse in Le Cateau Cambrésis in France.

The Museum of Decorative Arts and the Slovart publishing company have produced a book in Czech and English editions to accompany the exhibition.

Czech Television is making a documentary about Zika and Lida Ascher that will premiere in September 2019.

There will also be a project with Pavel Ivančic’s Studio of Fashion Design at the Academy of Arts, Architecture & Design in Prague, whose students will design outfits made with original Ascher fabrics.

Krásná jizba [Beautiful Room], established as a branch of the Družstevní práce [Cooperative Work; dp] publishing house in the late 1927, was one of the leading Czech institutions in the fields of interior design and culture during the first half of the 20th century. It became a platform for asserting the principles of Functionalism and implementing requirements on the quality of the mass production of utility objects. It operated as an arbiter of practical and tasteful living and, with its sales, production, exhibition and consulting activities, permeated the everyday life of thousands of families. Via the production and selling of home accessories and furnishings, characteristic of high aesthetic and utility value and, simultaneously, affordability, Krásná jizba aimed at fulfilling democratic principles in the culture of living. The focus of the institution and its upswing were the merit of the leading figures of the contemporary cultural scene, such as the designers Ladislav Sutnar, Antonín Kybal, Ludvika Smrčková and Bohumil Južnič, the architect Jan E. Koula, the photographer Josef Sudek, and many others. However, it did not manage to continue in its successful First-Republic era after the war, and the ultimate end of the initial ideas came with the changed political orientation of the country in 1948.
In the 1920s and 1930s, faith in the new life, characteristic of the avant-gardes in general, went hand in hand with highlighting the integration of aesthetic requirements and the factual realization of life within a social and ethical context. The main attention was thus seized by
the question of lifestyle, encompassing a wide range of issues which were surfacing with the vision of a new lifestyle and society and were related to many spheres – from living to working, education and health and, finally, culture and leisure time. The aim was to improve the quality of life of individuals in accordance with the goals of a socially-oriented
democratic society. The essential task after the First World War was to fulfill the elementary need of housing, and architects, theoreticians and social engineers often answered it with utopian and radical concepts.
It took Krásná jizba less than a year to abandon its initial focus on meeting the aesthetic needs of its customers through the primary sale of objects of art and, instead, switch to the culture of living and the sale of home accessories and furnishings. One of the stimuli behind this change was the Brno 1928 Exhibition of Contemporary Culture, which clearly demonstrated its focus on utilitarian Functionalist aesthetics and industrial production at the display of Association of Czechoslovak Work as well as other participating manufacturers. Nothing but this orientation could meet the goals of providing quality to the wider masses in the form of standardized products which would exclusively follow function. In accordance with the ethical background of the popular theses forged by Adolf Loos, strictly condemning ornamentation, designers laid great emphasis on the purity of shapes close to ideal geometric solids, and on simple form unburdened by anything that would excessively increase production costs. The most important aspects now became the natural quality of materials and their surfaces and structures and the typical features of the production process, all embodying the only acceptable source of aesthetic impression. As soon as KJ became headed by Ladislav Sutnar, it turned into an institution implementing these ideas
and requirements into everyday life, mainly via his own designs of drinking and dining sets which have since become iconic artifacts of local inter-war design and the most sought-after items of its range.

This exhibition of the experimental approaches to producing ceramics and porcelain found among students at European universities, their educators, and invited guests presents the outputs from one of the modules of an international grant within the “Creative Europe: Ceramics and Its Dimensions” program and the related sub-project Shaping the Future. The sub-project began with a workshop on the premises of the Kahla Porcelain factory in Germany gathering together students, teachers and other stakeholders from the four partner universities with the aim of exploring the material of ceramics and the associated new technologies. The participants explored various themes: Global Futures: Environment – Ecology – Economy, Societal changes, 3D printing – Old technologies revisited, and Food culture: impact on ceramic concepts.
Riikka Latva-Somppi, exhibition curator, observes on the subject: „Workshop openings grow into well-designed projects, and objects themed by food cultures use new technologies in their production or to reflect societal changes. Old technologies meet the new. Function is the focus here, but we also need irrational thinking resulting in seemingly crazy and useless applications – in the end, these may develop into the most revolutionary innovations.“


Czech participation in the exhibition

The exhibition has traveled the cities of Europe since 2016, and has its final reprise in Prague. During the preparations of the Prague exhibition, cutaror Milan Hlaveš and Dita Hálová mapped out seven studios at five institutions of higher education in the Czech Republic and one in Slovakia. They monitored the outputs from final-examination and diploma-thesis exhibitions with a view to the main topic of the exhibition, whose goal is to describe developments in current ceramic and porcelain design.
Czech and Slovak projects have an artistic level comparable with that abroad. A number of original artistic paths have also appeared in the area of modern technologies, and the latest generation of designers is making abundant use of them. Four studios are focused on work with ceramics and porcelain, while another three focus on industrial and product design – only a part of their work is with ceramic materials. The works of students at both types of studios are on the same professional level, differing only, perhaps, in their artistic and technical treatment. Just as in the European part of the exhibition, here as well students are supplemented by some of their educators and by guests from among the ranks of designers. They both influence the youngest generation as educators and experiment in their own works and are in many cases doctoral students themselves. These include for example Markéta Nováková and Mira Podmanická, Milan Pekař, Petr Stehlík, Studio Vobouch (Markéta Kalivodová and Richard Švejda), Matěj Polách and Vojtěch Říha (Superior Object), Roman Šedina, and Zuzana Knapková. Just like their students, they too often work at the borderline between design and the fine arts.


Ceramics and its Dimensions project
Ceramics and its Dimensions project is broad in scope. It offers a survey of the past and present of European ceramics and supports their innovation potential. It is supported by the European Union’s “Creative Europe” program, an activity framework for eighteen leading European museums and universities that are active in ceramics. They are headed by Porzellanikon, a porcelain museum in Selb, Germany.

The exhibition includes active zones in which you can get to know the traditional techniques used in creating ceramic objects and vessels, along with various processes for producing a porcelain mug, and try out designing your very own ceramic vessel.

The high-quality workmanship of her dressmakers, the luxurious fabrics she used, her sound knowledge of the latest Paris fashion trends adapted to Czech taste, together her business spirit and pleasant social demeanour, made Hana Podolska´s salon the most popular and best-known couture house in Czech society between the two world wars. Her clientele included famous Czech actresses, like Růžena Nasková, Jarmila Kronbauerová, Olga Scheinpflugová, Adina Mandlová, and Nataša Gollová, and other celebrities, such as the opera singer Jarmila Novotná, the racing car driver Eliška Junková, and Hana Benešová, the wife of the Czechoslovak president. The exhibition brings the visitor into the environment of this couture house of the First Republic, presenting more than 50 original models and a number of accessories. It uses film footage, photographs, and other documents to offer insight not only into the workings of the salon, but also into the sometimes very difficult life of Hana Podolská and her family, influenced by the ups and downs of the first fifty years of Czechoslovakia.
The exhibition includes interactive areas, in which visitors can become better acquainted with most of the fabrics used in the exhibited models and explore their texture (by touching them and looking at them under magnifying glass), leaf through the album „Did You Have Your Clothes Made at Podolska´s?“, and design their own formal wear.

Concept: Josef Koudelka
Curator: Irena Šorfová
Exhibition design: Emil Zavadil
Graphic design: Aleš Najbrt

This large retrospective exhibition is being held at the Museum of Decorative Arts in Prague to mark the exceptionally generous gift that Josef Koudelka is making to his native land. It is also a celebration of the eightieth birthday of this leading figure of contemporary photography.
The exhibition is arranged chronologically in seven sections, each comprising an individual thematic series. The first, called Beginnings, consists of rare vintage prints from the late 1950s and early 1960s, which were made by Koudelka for his first exhibition, at the Semafor theatre, Prague, in 1961. The next section, called Experiments, consists of early studies, which are important for comprehending Koudelka’s the originality. The next two series were made in parallel – Koudelka’s key work, Gypsies, which is today widely considered a classic of world photography, and the Theatre series, in which he takes the stylization of form to the extreme, with striking graphic images displaying what is now perceived as Koudelka’s unmistakable style in the theatre photography of that period. Invasion 68, his large reportage series, has played a particularly important role in Koudelka’s life. It was the reason that he was forced to leave the country in 1970. The Exiles series took Koudelka twenty-five years to make. It consists of photographs capturing feelings of alienation, expulsion, and the impossibility of return. The last section of the exhibition consists of the monumental Panoramas, large-format photographs that were made over three decades, in which he charts out the influence human beings have had on the contemporary landscape.
Today, Koudelka’s photographs are widely appreciated primarily for their high artistic value and also for the fact that he has never made a large number of prints; some of the earliest photographs exist in only several copies. This contributes greatly to the uniqueness of the set of photographs he is donating to the Museum of Decorative Arts in Prague. The Museum is thus becoming one of the few institutions to have in its collections and care such a large set of Koudelka’s work. His work is also owned by prestigious institutions like the Centre Pompidou and the Maison Européenne de la Photographie in Paris, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Art Institute of Chicago, the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.
To accompany the exhibition, a large book is being published by KANT, in Czech and English editions, containing a wide selection of Koudelka’s photos, documentary illustrations, and articles by Stuart Alexander, Josef Chuchma, Jan Mlčoch, Josef Moucha, Tomáš Pospěch, and Irena Šorfová, together with a reprint of an article by Anna Fárová first published in 1967.
The Koudelka: Returning retrospective is in a certain sense Koudelka’s return to his homeland, even though he continues to be a globetrotter, always on the road, photographing and working on his projects. During a life of ceaseless labour, he has repeatedly returned to his photographs, just as he has over the years repeatedly returned to the same places, topics, and subject matter, with the aim of achieving the best photographs. The Exiles series was twenty-five years in the making. Similarly, for twenty-five years he returned to places around the Mediterranean, resulting in the project of panoramic photographs called Vestiges. Koudelka’s work matures with time and even thirty or forty years later he believes that it makes sense for him to return to it and to publish new books that are relevant today.
During his life, Koudelka has always travelled his own path. He has never succumbed to outside influences or artistic trends. He has crossed the boundaries of various forms of expression, from reportage to graphic-art-like works, poetic documentary photography, and even large-format art. He has continuously reshaped his style and adapted it to the topic he is photographing. Koudelka unquestionably is among the most important contemporary photographers working today. He is often included amongst humanist documentary photographers, but it would be misleading to pigeonhole this distinctive character. Though many people have made good individual photographs, few have left such a remarkable legacy with their work as a whole.
The Museum of Decorative Arts in Prague has the largest collection of Czech photography in the world. It photos are regularly presented at dozens of exhibitions in this country and outside. Koudelka’s donation is exceptionally important. Together with the sets of photographs by František Drtikol and Josef Sudek, also donated to the Museum, the gift from Josef Koudelka will be among the most important sets of world photography in any Czech collection.
In parallel with the Koudelka: Návraty/Returning exhibition at the Museum of Decorative Arts, another exhibition, Koudelka: De-creazione, will be held at the Trade Fair Palace (Veletržní palác) of the National Gallery in Prague. It consists of a series of photographs that Josef Koudelka made for the Vatican’s first presentation at the Venice Biennale, in 2013. The series, inspired by the Book of Genesis, depicts three themes on the idea of destruction: the effects of time on human history and the natural environment, armed conflict, and the natural world versus the industrial world.

JOSEF KOUDELKA was born in Boskovice, Moravia, in 1938. Trained as an aeronautical engineer, he began to take photographs seriously in 1958. At that time, he photographed the world of several Prague theatres and the Romani. In 1968 he documented the Soviet-led Warsaw Pact invasion in Czechoslovakia. On the first anniversary of the invasion, these photos, attributed to P.P. (Prague Photographer), were published in many periodicals around the world, without Koudelka knowing about it beforehand. The photographs by the ‘anonymous Czech photographer’ earned him the Robert Capa Gold Medal of the Overseas Press Club. Today these photos are widely considered to be classic works of post-Second World War photojournalism. (To mark the fortieth anniversary of the invasion, a book of 249 of them was published, accompanied by articles and documents compiled by Czech historians; it has so far been published in twelve language editions.) Fearing possible retribution, he left the country in 1970, travelling to Great Britain, where he was granted political asylum. Since 1974 he has been a member of Magnum Photos. He later left for France, where, in 1987 he was granted French citizenship. In 1975, in collaboration with the French publisher Robert Delpire, he published the book Les gitans (The Gypsies; a revised and expanded version was published in Czech, as Cikáni, in 2011). This was followed, in 1988, by Exiles. Since that time, Koudelka has published fifteen books documenting the influence of human beings on the contemporary landscape. Among these publications are Černý trojúhelník/The Black Triangle (1994), Chaos (1999), Lime (2012), and Wall (2013). Koudelka’s works have been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art and the International Center of Photography in New York, the Hayward Gallery in London, the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, and the Palais de Tokyo in Paris. He has been awarded the Nadar Prize (1978), the Grand Prix national de la photographie (1989), the Grand Prix Cartier-Bresson (1991), the Hasselblad Foundation’s International Award in Photography (1992), and the Medal of Merit from the President of the Czech Republic (2002). In 2002, the French Ministry of Culture and Communication made him a Commander of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. He later received the Cornell Capa Infinity Award of the International Center of Photography in New York (2004) and the Artis Bohemiae Amicis award of the Minister of Culture of the Czech Republic (2010). A citizen of France and the Czech Republic, Koudelka is based in Paris and Prague.

The V&A Museum of Childhood’s major 2014—15 exhibition Small Stories: At home in a dolls’
house reveals the fascinating stories behind some of the UK’s best-loved dolls’ houses.
Through the stories of 12 dolls’ houses from the past 300 years, visitors are taken on a journey
through the history of the home, everyday lives and changing family relationships.
The small stories of each house are brought to life by the characters that live or work there.
Day-to-day life is illuminated through tales of marriages and parties, politics and crime. Each
house is displayed at a particular time of day and visitors can use buttons alongside the
showcases to activate the narration and light up each character as they talk.
The exhibition encompasses country mansions, the Georgian town house, suburban villas,
newly-built council estates and high-rise apartments. Displayed chronologically, the houses
also show developments in architecture and design.

The exhibition Residence: Prefab Estate presents the history of selected residential complexes in the Czech Republic and the social, political, cultural and economic circumstances that accompanied their construction. It follows the development of housing estates in the Czech lands from their start in the late 1940s up until the first years of the 1990s, when such construction came to an end. A brief summary is also presented of the later attempts at ‘humanising’ prefabricated buildings as well as current reflections by architects and historians on these estates today. Individual periods of housing-estate construction are presented through plans, models and historic photographs lent by public institutions and private collections from across the Czech Republic. Illustrating the historic context are various items from the areas of the arts, interior decoration, or industrial design. The visitor is thus provided with a basic overview of the types of construction, important structural systems, development of technical possibilities in the building industry.
The exhibition is the culmination of the research and exhibition project Prefabricated Housing Estates in the Czech Republic as Part of the Urban Environment (more briefly, The Paneláks), which took place from 2013 to 2017. The research team investigated the architecture and the urban design of over seventy Czech housing estates, as well as the demographic composition of their residents. In addition, the research took into account the development of the industrialisation of mass housing construction, changes in the political and economic conditions of socialist Czechoslovakia, and the changing role of architects and urban planners. Reinforcing the art-historical aspect of the study is the use of material from other humanistic disciplines, from the history of architecture and planning up through anthropology, heritage protection, or even historical demography.

Idea: Helena Koenigsmarková, Radim Vondráček a Michal Stříbrný

Curator: Michal Stříbrný

Exhibition design: Roháč Stratil architektonický ateliér

Graphic design: studio Colmo

The Director’s Choice exhibition offers a glimpse of the rich collections held by the Museum of Decorative Arts in Prague and present masterpieces from all spheres of decorative and applied arts and design. Its core constitutes an illustrative selection made by the museum’s director Helena Koenigsmarková, intended for the book published by Scala Arts & Heritage Publishers in London in the Director’s Choice series that introduces prominent museums and galleries through the eyes of their directors. Through the stories of these extraordinary objects, the exhibition examines the fates of the museum’s collections in times of social transformation. The display is arranged in thirty thematic sections devoted to the development of the arts and crafts from the Gothic and Renaissance periods to the first half of the 20th century, represented by works of Alphonse Mucha, František Drtikol, Pavel Janák, Ladislav Sutnar and many others. The unique works “with a story” are complemented by almost three hundred other objects from the museum’s wide-ranging collections, encompassing furniture, glass, fashion and clothing, jewellery, toys and photography.tvářena v letech 2017 – 2020.