The Skutek Association urged the Czech Fine Arts Foundation to announce elections for the board of directors.

Prague - The Skutek Association today called on the Foundation of Czech Visual Arts (NČVU) in an open letter to hold proper elections for the board of directors. The association's representatives criticize primarily the foundation's poor management, lack of transparency, and avoidance of internal control. In March, the association published an open letter from the chair of the NČVU supervisory board, Antonín Janák, on its Facebook, which pointed out that the foundation's board refused to call elections before the end of the term of all its members, thereby extending its mandate for another term. In March of this year, the NČVU supervisory board criticized the institution's leadership for its financial management, pointing to what it considered an unfavorable lease of a guesthouse near Mácha's Lake to the director's son. The CTK is seeking a statement from the board.

The Foundation of Czech Visual Arts was established in the 1990s as a successor organization to the artistic organization Dílo and later the Czech Arts Fund Foundation. It is meant to serve artistic unions, emerging artists, and help them. Therefore, significant works and properties, primarily the Mánes building in the center of Prague, were transferred from the state into its ownership.

The association stated that it drafted the call after studying the current findings of the supervisory board and after meeting with former members of the foundation's board. "We consider the situation in Mánes to be alarming. The poor management of a debt-ridden institution, further exacerbated by nepotism, lack of transparency, and avoidance of proper internal control, cannot be taken lightly after the supervisory board's reservations. We are convinced that we must call on the NČVU to hold elections for its bodies and on cultural organizations to put forward independent candidates," the call states.

Janák mentioned in the open letter that the term of all members of the NČVU board was to end on May 12, but the board decided not to call elections. "According to the foundation's statutes, the board elects itself, and if it doesn't want to, it won't call elections and will entrench itself in its positions, as the members of the board voted for this change in the statutes themselves," Janák wrote in the letter.

In March, the supervisory board pointed out the lease of a guesthouse in Staré Splavy near Mácha's Lake to the son of NČVU director Dagmar Baběradová. Until last autumn, Miloš Štorkán paid a rent of 200,000 crowns for seven months of the year from April to the end of October. In the cold part of the year, the foundation took care of the estate again. According to Janák, the supervisory board pressed director Baběradová and the board for more than a year to announce a tender for the guesthouse lease. The director only reacted this January after it was assigned to her by the board.

The supervisory board noted that a company was interested in the guesthouse, offering nearly 400,000 crowns for the lease. However, the lease was again awarded to Štorkán for 350,000 crowns. According to the head of the foundation's board, Daniel Netušil, who took up the position in mid-March, he allegedly offered money in advance, while the second interested party wanted to invest in the estate, thus covering the rent.

The initiative Mánes for Artists also tried to change the board in 2013, organizing a protest against the functioning of the foundation and elections among visual artists and theorists for a nine-member shadow board of the foundation.