Prague - The selection of a new director for the National Gallery (NG) in Prague will be left to the successor of Minister of Culture Václav Riedlbauch. He will recommend three candidates: the former head of the NG's Collection of Old Art Jiří Fajt, the current director of the Moravian Gallery in Brno Marek Pokorný, and economist Vladimír Rösela. One of them should replace the long-time director of the institution, Milan Knížák. Riedlbauch made this decision after consulting with Prime Minister Jan Fischer, who advised ministers not to take any significant steps after the elections yet. The Minister of Culture announced this today, nearly two months after the conclusion of the competition, to journalists. All three men recommended by the minister participated in the selection process. The committee recommended Fajt to the minister. Fajt, along with Pokorný and Vít Vlnas, the current director of the Collection of Old Art, were among the personalities the minister invited to participate in the competition. Reportedly, the current director of NG Knížák also applied. Knížák has been at the helm of NG since the summer of 1999. The arrival of a decisive man in a gallery where directors were then changing rapidly was initially welcomed by the professional community; however, Knížák's disagreements with the heads of NG's collections soon emerged, and criticism also came from outside. Instead of the model of NG as four autonomous collections, Knížák advocated for a centralized arrangement. Due to this, in 2000, the directors of both the Old Art (Fajt) and Modern Art collections left, and curators began to depart as well. Knížák began to present NG as a museum and shifted from organizing exhibitions to permanent exhibitions. According to critics, the most problematic aspect of Knížák's conception of NG's museum role was the effort to expand the number of exhibitions and objects that the gallery had to take care of.
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