The Gloria musaealis prize was sought by 51 museums and galleries

Prague - Representatives of the National Gallery, the Museum of Applied Arts, and the Regional Museum of Prague-East received today the Gloria musaealis awards presented at the 15th annual competition in the Bethlehem Chapel. The award from the Czech Committee of the International Council of Museums (ICOM) was won by the Memorial of National Literature for the exhibition Havel-Prigov and Czech Experimental Creation. It was created in honor of the 80th anniversary of Václav Havel's birth and recalled his visual poetry in the context of Czech and foreign trends in experimental art of the last century.

"The competition received entries from 51 museums and galleries with 81 projects,” said Anna Komárková, the executive director of the Association of Museums and Galleries, to ČTK. The ceremony, held at the Czech Technical University in connection with the 310th anniversary of the founding of this oldest Czech technical university, focused on the connection between museums and science.

In the category of Museum Exhibition of the Year 2016, the National Gallery in Prague won with the Czech-Bavarian regional exhibition Emperor Charles IV 1316-2016, organized from May to September to commemorate the 700th anniversary of the monarch's birth. It was the first exhibition project of countries connected by a shared history, cultural ties, and the personality of Charles IV. In Prague and then in Nuremberg, it showcased exhibits from many countries, some of which were presented for the first time.

The publication Design in the Czech Lands 1900-2000. Institutions of Modern Design, authored by Ivy Knobloch and Radim Vondráček from the Museum of Applied Arts in Prague, won in the second category. It is the result of many years of work by curators of memory institutions and university educators. It shows the transformations in the appearance of everyday objects as well as luxury production, lifestyle, and space.

The Museum Achievement of the Year is the Memorial of National Oppression and Resistance, which the Regional Museum of Prague-East built at the castle in Panenské Břežany, where Karl Hermann Frank settled shortly after the German occupation of the Czech lands. The goal was to reconstruct the building and use it for an exhibition commemorating the horrors of the Nazi occupation, domestic and foreign resistance during World War II, as well as the punishment of war criminals and collaborators.

A special award, on the recommendation of the honorary committee of the competition, was given to the National Agricultural Museum for the exhibition Dispossessed! Half a Century of Persecution of the Peasant Class. It highlighted the painful and still neglected and insufficiently reflected topic of Czech agriculture. The elimination of so-called kulaks in the 1950s, the expulsion of entire families from their ancestral farms to inhospitable conditions, as well as the imprisonment and execution of farmers and collectivization marked the fates of at least two generations.

For the second time, the results of the visitors' competition for the "Museum of the Year" were published. The first three places were occupied by the Hlučínsko Museum, the Regional Museum of Mělník, and the Silesian Regional Museum with its branch the Historical Exhibition Building, and the Slovácko Museum in Uherské Hradiště with its branch the Gallery of the Slovácko Museum.

More information, including rankings for other places, can be found at www.gloriamusaealis.cz.