Eight candidates are vying for the position of rector at VŠUP

Prague - Eight candidates are vying for the vacant position of the rector of the University of Applied Arts (VŠUP). Among them is, for example, the dismissed director of the National Theatre Daniel Dvořák and the former director of the Academia publishing house Alexander Tomský. Today’s public presentation of all the candidates was attended by a full hall of students who were curious to see who would take the position after the dismissed Boris Jirků. The secret voting for the rector will take place on Wednesday.
    Jirků was dismissed by the president in June; it was the first such move in the history of the Czech Republic. The president made this decision based on a proposal from the academic senate. The long-standing dissatisfaction with Jirků's work led the senate to propose his dismissal. According to the senate, Jirků bypassed its right to evaluate some of the rector's decisions, such as changes in the composition of the school's artistic council. Jirků dismissed several prominent figures from the artistic scene as well as from the field of art theory from the council. The rector did not acknowledge any of his shortcomings.
    The atmosphere at the school was tense not only at the time of the senate's proposal but immediately after Jirků was elected rector last October. The previous rector, Jiří Pelcl, along with many teachers and students, criticized Jirků for participating in the rector's election as a member of the academic senate. While the law does not prohibit this, the senate pointed out that a person in the position of rector must possess moral qualities. According to the senate, voting for oneself does not qualify as such. Jirků won the election by just one vote.
    The chairman of the Academic Senate, Jindřich Smetana, told the CTK after Jirků's dismissal that the school does not want to rush the election of a new rector and would like to search for candidates outside the school. All current candidates except for Jindřich Vybíral, who teaches at the school, meet this criterion.
    Richard Drury, a British curator active in the Czech Republic, is applying for the competition for the second time; last year he ultimately received fewer votes than the winning Jirků. A graduate of the University of Cambridge in the fields of Czech studies and European avant-garde culture, he has been active in the Czech art scene since 1992.
    Art historian and Orientalist-Japanologist Filip Suchomel worked as a curator of Japanese art at the Náprstek Museum in the 90s, was the director of the Asian Art Collection at the National Gallery in Prague, and spent ten months on a scholarship in Japan. He currently serves as the head of the collections department of the Museum of Applied Arts of the Moravian Gallery in Brno.
    Publicist Tomský is currently the director of the publishing house Abonent ND, which is the publishing section of the National Theatre. He unsuccessfully applied for a seat on the Czech Television Council last year and this year as well. After his dismissal from the position of director of the National Theatre, Dvořák remains an employee of the scene.
    Pavel Liška is an art historian focusing on contemporary art, is active in Germany, and was also the director of the House of Art in Brno. Martin Dostál is a curator who participated in the film about Zdeněk Svěrák titled Tatínek. The only woman among the candidates is the publicist and editor-in-chief of the magazine Zlatý řez Jana Tichá.