The glass fountain from Expo 58 is in the National Technical Museum

Prague - One of the awarded exhibits at the World Exhibition Expo 58 - a glass fountain - has finally been restored after decades. It is now located in the National Technical Museum (NTM), which is undergoing a multi-year reconstruction. The opening of all original and new exhibits is planned for the autumn of next year.
    The interior fountain was created for the glass exhibition in the Czechoslovak pavilion, which received dozens of awards, including the main prize, in fierce international competition. The fountain itself also received an honorary diploma. The design was created by architect Adolf Benš with his assistant Jaroslav Kadlec and painter Dana Hlobilová. The oval basin was made using new technology with the use of polymer resins and was covered with a glass mosaic. The stand in the basin held hand-blown and shaped glass bowls, over which water cascaded from above.
    According to Jana Paulyová from NTM, the fountain was not only a bold artistic composition of its time, but also one of the first realizations of an artwork in public space. However, the fountain faced the fate of many similar exhibits. In 1959, it was still installed at the Czechoslovak glass exhibition in Moscow, after which it disappeared without a trace. It was rediscovered in 1964 in Bratislava and placed in a park near a gallery in Nitra.
    The glass bowls had to be removed for the winter, and the sculpture withstood the elements until the mid-90s. By then, it was in a state of emergency, and the gallery offered it to the author, who had the remains of the fountain transported to Prague.
    In 2005, Hlobilová donated the fountain to the NTM collections, with the only condition being that the museum restore it to its original state and find a place for it. The architect of the architecture and construction exhibition, David Vávra, proposed installing it in the respiratory area of the museum's third floor.
    The fountain waited for three years in the storage for restoration until last spring when the museum received 900,000 crowns from the Integrated Protection System (ISO) program. Experts restored the mosaic shell, which was transferred to a new basin made according to the original plan. New glass bowls were produced by the same glassworks that created the originals.
    According to experts, the fountain is an example of refined artistic sensitivity from the late 1950s; its installation in the functionalist interior of the museum demonstrates that objects of different styles can coexist in mutual harmony.