The new commission is to prepare a proposal for the direction of the National Gallery

Prague - Minister of Culture Jiří Besser (TOP 09) today established a fifteen-member Commission for Gallery Issues. According to the ministry's website, the commission is to prepare a professional proposal for the further direction of the National Gallery (NG) after the term of its current head Milan Knížák ends.
Minister Besser canceled the selection process for the position of gallery director two weeks ago and decided to announce a new one so that the new director of NG could be appointed by June 1 of next year. Thus, Knížák will lead the institution according to the minister's decision only until the end of August next year.
Besser also announced for the first time that he intends to establish the now formed commission, which, according to his vision, should prepare a professional opposition to the currently valid concept of the National Gallery.
The commission will include, for example, the rector of AVU Jiří Kotalík, the dean of the Faculty of Arts at Charles University Michal Stehlík, and the chairman of the Gallery Council Jiří Jůza. Among the members is also Lubomír Konečný from the Institute of Art History of the Academy of Sciences, Vlasta Čiháková-Noshiro from the Association of Visual Arts Critics and Theorists, Jindřich Vybíral from the Department of Art History and Aesthetics at VŠUP, Tomáš Pospiszyl (FAMU), Milena Bartlová (Art Historical Society in the Czech Lands), Marta Smolíková (Research, Information and Educational Center ProCulture), and Ladislav Kesner (consulting company Cultropa).
Vlasta Čiháková-Noshiro told ČTK that she had already written in the Literární noviny in March about her vision for the candidate for the new director. According to her, the candidate must not be in a conflict of interest with commercial-business or political connections. He should be a highly qualified person with experience in managing an institution at a high level, and not an active artist with subjective ambitions. The criteria for the success of such a personality must be assessed by a qualified commission. "For me, only the former head of the Collection of Old Art at NG Jiří Fajt meets the criteria, for the management of the Trade Fair Palace Zdeněk Felix, a free curator with a lifelong museum practice," she stated.
According to another member of the new commission, art historian Tomáš Pospiszyl, the first meeting will take place in mid-September. "I would be interested to know what the previous commission, which worked on a similar task, did wrong and what was wrong with the conducted competition when a new one is being prepared. In other words - why is it necessary to redo everything," Pospiszyl told ČTK. He believes that their goal will not be to prepare a methodological guideline; that's the ministry's responsibility.
"It's more about us discussing the basic areas on what to evaluate similar institutions and what tasks to expect from them. The entire gallery system, as it functions in the Czech Republic today, is largely a remnant of the culture of the former regime, whose budgetary conditions were different fifty years ago. There will never be more money, and therefore the entire system must somehow respond to these changes," Pospiszyl added.
According to the ministry, the aim of establishing the group was to ensure the widest range of opinions, participation from various types of interested institutions, their significant representatives, different types of galleries, and respect for regional distribution.
Minister Besser also decided on August 12 to order an audit of NG. For some other organizations, such as the National Technical Museum or the Czech Philharmonic, which fall under the ministry, the audit will be conducted by Ernst&Young Audit. In the National Library, the audit will be the responsibility of KPMG.
The canceled selection process for the position of gallery director was announced in February this year by Besser's predecessor Václav Riedlbauch. The new head of NG was to be proposed by an international commission that recommended Jiří Fajt, a historian specializing in old art. Fajt worked at NG in the 1990s, when he led the Collection of Old Art, but left the gallery after disagreements with Knížák. However, Riedlbauch ultimately decided not to appoint a new director and leave it to his successor. He did, however, present him with three proposals: Fajt, the director of the Moravian Gallery in Brno Marek Pokorný, and economist Vladimír Rösels.