Ten people are interested in the position of the director of the Prague gallery

Source
Markéta Horešovská
Publisher
ČTK
12.09.2012 19:30
Czech Republic

Prague

Prague - The competition for the position of director of the Gallery of the Capital City of Prague (GHMP) has attracted renowned personalities. Marek Pokorný, who led the Moravian Gallery in Brno until last week, and Rostislav Koryčánek, the director of the Museum of Art of the City of Brno, have applied. Among the ten candidates are also three employees of GHMP, including the director who left the position two weeks ago. According to the city's plans, the new director should take office in November.

    Most of the applicants have published their concepts for leading GHMP on the city hall website, while three candidates disagreed with its publication.
    Among the candidates are also Eva Balaštíková, Zdenek Marek, and curators Simona Vladíková, Richard Drury, and Magdalena Juříková. Milan Bufka is reapplying; he left the position of director at the end of August after four years. The main curator of GHMP, Karel Srp, and Petra Hoftichová, the curator of the GHMP public sculpture collection who previously led the gallery as acting director, are also in the running.
    Bufka started as director in 2008 under the then councilor Milan Richter (ODS). Previously, he worked as the administrator of the bankruptcy estate of Škoda. He announced his resignation earlier this June after the city management criticized him for exceeding the budget for the Slav Epic exhibition. However, Bufka contested the criticisms.
    The competition that Bufka won was held because Richter removed the gallery's chief Karel Srp, allegedly due to a poorly concluded contract for the repair of public sculptures managed by GHMP.
    According to the contract, the sculptures are leased by a company that can place advertisements on the scaffolding around them; the profits should then cover the repairs of the monuments. According to Richter, the contract was disadvantageous for Prague, but it is non-terminable and will end only in 2015. After significant criticism, Prague excluded the Jan Hus monument from the contract. Its repair has continually been postponed, and according to Bufka's latest statements while in office, Prague should announce a competition for its repair soon. Reportedly, Prague is not addressing the supposedly unfavorable contract for the repair of monuments.
    After Bufka's arrival, Karel Srp became the chief curator of the gallery, a newly created position at the time, and he is now applying for the director position.
    The director of the Moravian Gallery, Pokorný, resigned on September 4. He reportedly made the decision based on his own consideration, having led the largest art museum in Moravia since 2004. Koryčánek has been leading the Brno House of Art for five years. Previously, he worked as a curator or editor-in-chief of the architectural magazine Era 21. Vladíková was the director of the East Bohemian Gallery in Pardubice but resigned from the position last year when the region planned to merge the gallery with the East Bohemian Museum. However, the region postponed the potential merger this spring.
    Richard Drury, originally from Britain, has been working in the Czech Republic since the early 90s. He worked for a long time at the former Czech Museum of Fine Arts. Like Pokorný, he applied for the first of two recent competitions for the director of the National Gallery; Pokorný also applied in the second competition.
    The National Gallery recently announced a selection procedure for the position of director and chief curator of the Collection of Modern and Contemporary Art. How it will be filled after the competition for the head of the Prague city gallery attracted a large number of applicants is unclear.
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