The committee recommended three candidates for the director of NGP to the Minister of Culture

Marek Pokorný

Prague - The selection committee recommended to the Minister of Culture Lubomír Zaorálek (ČSSD) three candidates for the position of General Director of the National Gallery in Prague (NGP). The first in line is the current director of the Plato Gallery of Modern Art in Ostrava, Marek Pokorný, the second is Alicja Knast from Poland, and the third is Jiří Fajt. The Ministry of Culture announced this in a press release. Art historian Jiří Fajt had already served as the NGP director for five years when he was dismissed last year by the previous Minister of Culture Antonín Staněk.

All three candidates will be approached to undergo a managerial-psychological test in August. In the meantime, in the coming weeks, the materials of the three finalists, which they presented before the selection committee, will be sent to several invited foreign experts from the Vienna Albertina, the Paris Centre Pompidou, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. The experts will send their recommendations, and the minister will then decide on the winner based on all the materials. The new director could assume the position this fall.

The Ministry of Culture announced the competition in mid-April. It was exactly a year after Fajt's dismissal. Minister Staněk then removed not only Fajt but also the director of the Olomouc Museum of Art, Michal Soukup, from their positions. Both were dismissed by Staněk citing economic misconduct. The police later shelved both criminal complaints, and the Czech Republic apologized to Fajt for his removal from the position of NGP director.

Staněk's actions led to protests from part of the cultural community and initiated thoughts about his departure from office. Staněk resigned last May, but President Miloš Zeman refused to accept his resignation and delayed the removal. At the request of Prime Minister Andrej Babiš, he was dismissed only at the end of July. At the end of August, the president then appointed Zaorálek as the new minister. The dispute over the change of the Minister of Culture thus lasted three and a half months, and the Social Democracy threatened to leave the government over it.

Just before President Zeman accepted Staněk's resignation, he announced a selection process for Fajt's successor. Minister Zaorálek canceled it upon his appointment to the ministry and temporarily dismissed the economist Ivan Morávek from the NGP leadership. Instead, he appointed Anne-Maria Nedomová, the wife of the director of the Rudolfinum Gallery, Petr Nedomy, to manage the gallery.

Interested candidates for the NGP director position could submit applications to the new selection process until mid-June. The first round of selection involved a formal check of candidates' applications and all their requirements. On Monday, the selection committee convened, where ten candidates presented themselves. Among them were nine individuals and one collective. The committee rated them with points and recommended three to the minister. The selection committee had 14 members, chaired by architect Josef Pleskot.

The National Gallery in Prague is an institution with a tradition of more than two hundred years that collects, records, studies, exhibits, publishes, and mediates works of art from all visual arts disciplines from antiquity to the present. In the capital, it has six buildings with permanent exhibitions or displays, and it also organizes exhibitions in the Valdštejn Riding School, which belongs to the Senate. The gallery manages the largest collection of artworks in the Czech Republic.