Fajt wants to change the organization of the National Gallery, he will establish an acquisition fund

Prague - The new director of the National Gallery in Prague, Jiří Fajt, counts among his immediate plans a change in the organizational structure, personnel changes among leading experts, and he wants to give curators more competencies. According to him, the buildings housing the collections urgently need repairs, and he has already agreed with the Minister of Culture, Daniel Herman, to establish an acquisition fund. In an interview with ČTK, Fajt described the current gallery as an inflexible behemoth and a difficult-to-manage institution from which personal responsibility and motivation have vanished. He wants to build it into a modern museum comparable to institutions not only in Europe.
He took up the position of director of the NG on July 1. At the end of summer, he wants to introduce the team of his closest collaborators. "We will immediately start analyzing the condition of the NG buildings. However, after just the first week, we are discovering the dismal state of some of them," he says, referring particularly to the Trade Fair Palace. A year ago, the director of the Collection of Modern and Contemporary Art housed there, Helena Musilová, estimated the necessary reconstruction of the palace's façade at 250 million crowns. In addition to the façade not looking representative, its condition causes significant energy losses.
"The lack of care has had the most impact on this significant functionalist building. However, the Sternberg Palace is not faring any better, significant investments are awaited for the St. Agnes Monastery, and the Kinsky Palace will have to change its public face," Fajt lists, adding that it is necessary to redefine the use of individual objects.
According to the director, decisions about the function of individual NG objects and whether the institution will part with some will also depend on operating costs. "In recent times, the NG acquired buildings without a predetermined concept for their use. The amount of the state contribution to the operation of the NG has not changed since the 1990s. The NG has never acquired a building built specifically for its needs and exclusively uses objects constructed for other purposes in various epochs. Therefore, each of the gallery buildings has its limits."
The two-hundred-million state contribution barely covers operating costs for the buildings, with half going to security and energy, while the other half is spent on collection management, repairs, maintenance of the buildings, and salaries. According to Fajt, state subsidies no longer allow for the care of the buildings. The NG does not have an acquisition fund from which it could systematically purchase art. "In this way, it does not fulfill its mission, which is to regularly document events in the art scene. Starting next year, such a fund will be established as a budget chapter with designated financial resources," he stated.
According to Fajt, there is no money left from the state subsidy for scientific activities or the preparation of exhibitions, their promotion, or educational activities related to the public. "Given the situation, it would be reasonable for the state to properly provide for salaries and state property, namely the buildings and collections; the management would then be responsible for securing sufficient resources for the NG's own program from non-state sources," he believes.
Changes in organizational layout and administrative management of collections are necessary, according to Fajt. "The NG administration is spread across six objects, which brings significant managerial problems and costs. There is no common intranet in the NG. The result is an inflexible behemoth where even trivial decisions take an unreasonably long time, often taking several weeks," he describes his findings. However, according to Fajt, the fragmentation of the institution also affects professional activities, as there is a lack of discussion among the various departments.
The NG is divided into five collections that more or less create permanent exhibitions and occupy separate spaces. "The scheme for managing the collection section in the NG has become outdated. I can envision a more modern and simpler way of management," says Fajt. In the new organizational structure, he plans to significantly promote the curator, the very soul of every museum. While he intends to choose his closest collaborators for top management positions himself, he would like to establish open selection processes, possibly including international ones, for filling curator positions.
Perhaps the most visible dramaturgical change, according to him, will be the conceptual connection of the previously separately presented collections of Czech and European art. He also wants to rethink the concept of long-term exhibitions, one of the first of which to undergo changes will likely be the one in the Trade Fair Palace.