Knížák did not fulfill initial hopes after ten years at the helm of the NG

Prague - Initially, it sparked hope and expectations, but later Milan Knížák, as the director of the National Gallery in Prague (NG), increasingly faced criticism from the professional community. This is evident from an article summarizing the ten-year anniversary of Knížák's tenure at NG in the art journal Art&Antique, which will be published on July 9. The anniversary of the moment when Knížák was appointed by the then Minister of Culture Pavel Dostál (ČSSD) as the head of one of the largest state collecting institutions fell on July 1.
Knížák at the helm of NG has already sparked several attempts by experts and artists to have him dismissed. The Ministry of Culture never heeded these calls. The last time there was talk of Knížák's continued position at NG was in the spring when former minister Václav Jehlička (KDU-ČSL) announced the opening of competitions for the heads of contributory organizations that had been in their positions for more than six years. His successor Václav Riedlbauch, however, has a different opinion about these competitions due to the need to justify positions and does not want to open them broadly.
The author of the article, Jan Skřivánek, recalls that NG struggled in the early 1990s with a protracted reconstruction of the Trade Fair Palace and began transforming towards greater autonomy of individual collections. Both of these processes were accompanied by a number of personal and political conflicts, resulting in frequent changes of directors.
Knížák ended his position as the rector of the Academy of Fine Arts in 1997. At the school, he gained a reputation as a bold reformer who openly expresses his opinions. In 1998, he ran for the Senate for the ODS but was unsuccessful in the elections.
Soon, speculation began that Knížák was being considered for the then-vacant position of director of NG as part of the opposition agreement. However, Dostál promised that the new director would emerge from a proper competition. The commission selected four candidates from those who applied, and Knížák ended up in third to fourth place. Only then did the minister announce the second round, in which the commission selected from the aforementioned four and recommended Knížák.
Experts praised Knížák's first year at the head of NG, although some of his actions at the time were rather the culmination of previous efforts by others. This mainly concerns the acquisition of several dozen restituted paintings from the collections of Jindřich Waldes and Oskar Morawetz valued at 102 million crowns. The government provided the funds in mid-October 1999.
Knížák's second success was the opening of a new permanent exhibition at the Trade Fair Palace in June 2000. In November, a permanent exhibition of Gothic art was introduced at the Convent of St. Agnes, and by spring, the reconstruction of the Kinsky Palace was completed. Thus, within 18 months, he seemingly achieved more than his predecessors had in all those years, the author writes.
However, according to him, Knížák's disagreements with the heads of NG collections soon began. Knížák started advocating for a centralized arrangement instead of the model of NG as four semi-autonomous collections. As a result, in 2000, the directors of the Collection of Old Art and the Collection of Modern and Contemporary Art left, and curators also began to depart.
Knížák began to present NG as a museum and shifted away from organizing exhibitions towards permanent installations. The most problematic aspect of Knížák's conception of NG's museum role, according to Skřivánek, is the attempt to increase the number of exhibitions and objects that the gallery must take care of. The result is that a substantial part of its budget is consumed by air conditioning and building security. Operational costs drain resources that could be used for programming, and permanent exhibitions are also less visited than temporary shows.
The author also recalls the situation after the floods in 2002. In Zbraslav, the water submerged hundreds of 19th-century sculptures. Although Knížák claimed that the water had not damaged them, NG had 579 flood-damaged sculptures restored from 2003 to 2007 and drew at least 14 million crowns from the Ministry of Culture for this purpose.
Skřivánek also mentions the criticized relationship of the head of NG regarding international loans and controversial purchases, providing figures that allegedly demonstrate that despite Knížák's initial proclamations, he failed to increase attendance at NG's facilities. However, comparable data can be difficult to extract from publicly available materials.