Kunsthalle Praha | |
Established | 2022 |
---|---|
Location | Klárov 132/5, Prague 1, 118 00 |
Coordinates | 50°05′32″N14°24′35″E / 50.09232°N 14.40963°E |
Type | Art museum |
Director | Ivana Goossen |
Website | www |
The Kunsthalle Praha is a private art museum for contemporary art that opened in February 2022. It is located in the Czech capital Prague. The museum is housed in a former cultural monument, the Zenger Transformation Station building. The director and CEO of the Kunsthalle Praha Foundation is Bulgarian Ivana Goossen. [1]
The museum is supported by the non-profit Pudil Family Foundation, which wanted to create a platform with Kunsthalle Praha to promote the understanding and appreciation of Czech and international modern and contemporary art. [2]
According to the Pudil Family Foundation, a conscious decision was made to use the German-language term “Kunsthalle“ in the name of the museum, on the one hand to refer to Prague's multicultural roots as a city of three nations and two languages, and on the other hand to point to Prague's cultural significance in the 19th and first half of the 20th century; where Czechs, Germans and the Jewish community lived together. [3]
The museum has set itself the task of contributing to a better understanding of Czech and international art of the 20th and 21st centuries. Therefore, the museum is committed to established and emerging artists from Central Europe, as well as to discovering artistic trends and periods that are underrepresented or little known in the Czech Republic. [4] The museum has also implemented its own artist-in-residence programme, in which international artists can participate. [3]
The museum's task profile is based on three pillars:
The museum's collection of modern and contemporary art is still being built up. Among other things, the museum acquired the collection of artists from the Fluxus movement of the couple Maria and Milan Knížák [5] and also took over the private art collection of Eva and Petr Zeman. [6]
To realise its mission, the museum has developed an international programme of temporary exhibitions of modern and contemporary art and innovative educational activities. [3]
The museum has a total floor space of approximately 5700 square metres. It includes exhibition spaces for 3 galleries, venues for educational programmes and other cultural and social events. A terrace on the roof of the building is open to the public as a viewing café. Other facilities include a bistro, a bookshop and a design store. Rooms for depots are located in the basement. [3]
The Kunsthalle is located below Prague Castle on in the Malá Strana district. The building was originally constructed between 1930 and 1931 by the City of Prague Electricity Works as a transformer station. [7] Previously, there was a barrack on the site. The design by architect Vilém Kvasnička was executed in the neoclassical style, [8] which corresponds to the historical character of the area. The Transformation Station was named after the physicist and meteorologist Václav Zenger, a professor at the Czech Technical University in Prague. [9]
The building was declared a cultural monument by the Czech Ministry of Culture in April 2015. [10] The owner at the time then sold the building to a real estate company, which is a joint-stock company owned by Petr Pudil and his wife Pavlina. In 2016, the Pudil couple decided to convert the building into an art museum for their private art collection through their non-profit foundation, the Pudil Family Foundation. [11]
The conversion and extension of the building was undertaken by the Prague-based project office Schindler Seko Architekti s.r.o.. During the reconstruction, the building was completely gutted, [12] leaving only the perimeter walls of the original cultural monument. [13]
On 31 October 2022, the reconstruction won the Czech National Architecture Award 2022. [14]
Prague is the capital and largest city of the Czech Republic and the historical capital of Bohemia. Situated on the Vltava river, Prague is home to about 1.4 million people. The city has a temperate oceanic climate, with relatively warm summers and chilly winters.
Václav Havel Airport PragueCzech pronunciation:[ˈlɛcɪʃcɛˈvaːt͡slavaˈɦavlaˈpraɦa], formerly Prague Ruzyně International Airport, is an international airport of Prague, the capital of the Czech Republic. The airport was founded in 1937, when it replaced the Kbely Airport. It was reconstructed and extended in 1956, 1968, 1997, and 2006. In 2012, it was renamed after the last president of Czechoslovakia and the first president of the Czech Republic, Václav Havel. It is located at the edge of the Prague-Ruzyně area, next to Kněževes village, 12 km (7 mi) west of the centre of Prague and 12 km (7 mi) southeast of the city of Kladno.
A kunsthalle is a facility that mounts temporary art exhibitions, similar to an art gallery. It is distinct from an art museum by not having a permanent collection.
Prague Stock Exchange is the largest and oldest securities market organizer in the Czech Republic. After a 50-year hiatus brought about by World War II and the Communist regime, it was reopened in 1993. Thus PSE resumed the activities of the Prague Commodities and Stock Exchange founded in 1871. PSE was advised by a group of leading Central and Eastern European scholars including American financier, Raymond Staples.
The Hamburger Kunsthalle is the art museum of the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg, Germany. It is one of the largest art museums in the country. It consists of three connected buildings, dating from 1869, 1921 (Kuppelsaal) and 1997, located in the Altstadt district between the Hauptbahnhof and the two Alster lakes.
The National Museum (NM) is a public museum dedicated to natural scientific and historical collections of the Czech Republic, its history, culture and people, among others. The museum was founded in 1818 by Kašpar Maria Šternberg. Historian František Palacký was also strongly involved in the foundation of the museum.
Komerční banka (“KB”) is a major Czech bank and the parent company of KB Group, a member of the Société Générale international financial group. KB is a universal bank providing a wide range of services in retail, corporate and investment banking complemented by specialised financial services produced by KB’s subsidiaries or other SG Group companies. KB Group operates in the Czech Republic and also provides services to corporate clients in Slovakia. It serves more than 1.6 million customers in 399 branches.
Daniel Pudil is a Czech former professional footballer who played for the Czech Republic national team and currently plays as a left back or left winger for Northern Counties East League Premier Division club Hallam.
Michael Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset have worked together as an artist duo since 1995. Their work explores the relationship between art, architecture and design.
Prague 7 is a municipal district in Prague, Czech Republic.
Prada Marfa is a permanent sculptural art installation by artists Elmgreen & Dragset, located along U.S. Route 90 in Jeff Davis County, Texas, United States, 1.4 miles (2.3 km) northwest of Valentine, and about 26 miles (42 km) northwest of Marfa. The installation, in the form of a freestanding building—specifically a Prada storefront—was inaugurated on October 1, 2005. The artists described the work as a "pop architectural land art project."
The women's section of AC Sparta Praha is a women's football club from Prague, Czech Republic. Together with their local neighbour Slavia, Sparta dominates the national league having won 21 of the 31 titles while Slavia has won the other ten. They have taken part in UEFA competitions several times and got their best result in the 2005–06 UEFA Women's Cup when they reached the quarter-finals, losing over two legs to Djurgården.
Josef Bolf is a Czech painter. He studied at the Academy between 1990–1998. In 1995 he studied at Kongsthögskolan (Stockholm) and in 1996 at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Stuttgart. From 1996 to 2002 he was a member of the art group Bezhlavý jezdec.
Veronika Drahotová is a Czech artist and curator. She is best known for mixed-media work incorporating painting, photography, video and installation.
Prague was the first city in Czechoslovakia to introduce modern trolleybuses. Only a few other trolleybus systems existed previously in the Czech lands – in České Velenice (Gmünd) and České Budějovice – using the same overhead system as the Electromote, the predecessor of all trolleybuses.
The Marian column of Prague is a religious monument consisting of a column topped with a statue of the Virgin Mary, located in the city's Old Town Square. The original column was erected in 1650, shortly after the conclusion of the Thirty Years' War. It was demolished in November 1918, coinciding with the fall of Austria-Hungary. In 2020, the column was reconstructed, being completed on 15 August 2020.
Věra Lišková was a Czech glass artist. She is known for pioneering the use of borosilicate glass or pyrex in glass art.
Václav Karel Bedřich Zenger was a Czech physicist, meteorologist, professor and rector of the Czech Technical University in Prague.
Tarik Kiswanson, born 19 July 1986, Halmstad, is a Swedish, French, Jordanian and Palestinian visual artist. He lives and works in Paris.