The competition for the restoration of the Wilson monument in Prague has a winner

Prague - The monument of American President Woodrow Wilson in front of Prague's Main Train Station will be restored by a trio of sculptors: Václav Frýdecký, Michal Blažek, and Daniel Talavera. This was reported by ČTK through Magdaléna Vošalíková, representing the company American Friends of the Czech Republic (AFoCR). The organization announced the competition for the restoration of the monument last June.
    Thirteen individuals and teams participated in the competition. Due to the balanced quality of the proposals, the evaluation committee selected three finalists, who then had to create a smaller plaster model. In the end, the team of Frýdecký, Blažek, and Talavera won.
    "We were struck by the message that the winning sculpture radiates, the authors of the model managed to capture and develop the uniqueness and strength of the moment that Albín Polášek captured in the original statue,” said committee member Paul W. Beckmann from the Albín Polášek Foundation. Besides Beckmann, the committee included representatives from Prague 1, the city magistrate, sculptors Ivan Kalvoda and Milan Vácha, and architect Mikuláš Hulec.
    The trio of winning sculptors will work on the statue for 18 months. The work will then be placed on a pedestal in the central part of the park in front of the new terminal of the Main Train Station in Prague. According to Vošalíková, the monument will be unveiled after the station reconstruction is completed.
    The monument to Woodrow Wilson, who served as President of the USA from 1913 to 1921, was erected in 1928 in Vrchlického Sady in front of the main station building. Its author was sculptor Albín Polášek.
    Wilson made his mark in history with successes in domestic policy and by presenting a program to Congress in January 1918. He called for open diplomacy, freedom in trade, worldwide disarmament, the right of nations to self-determination, and above all, the establishment of the League of Nations, and he spoke of autonomy for the nations of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy.
    In 1941, the Prague monument was destroyed by the Nazis. The place where it stood is now occupied by a new train hall. In January 2008, the original plaster cast of the head and shoulders was discovered in the storage of the National Gallery. According to it, experts from the Department of Cybernetics at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering of Czech Technical University in Prague will create a digital model that the sculptor will use in the sculpture’s creation.
    The non-governmental non-profit organization American Friends of the Czech Republic deals with relations between the USA and the Czech Republic in the areas of trade, business ethics, legal system reform, and education. Since its founding in 1995, AFoCR has gathered circles of American society supporting the Czech Republic. In 2002, it initiated the establishment of the monument to Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk in Washington.