The Trade Fair Palace will continue to serve art, the National Gallery is also considering a new building

Prague - After twenty years of using the Trade Fair Palace for art presentation needs, there is a debate about whether this function of the building, constructed for other purposes, is ideal. The National Gallery in Prague exhibits modern and contemporary art there. However, the complex interior does not allow for the display of certain works, it has very high operating costs, and the building needs repairs after 20 years of operation. The current director of the National Gallery, Jiří Fajt, began to talk about leaving the palace and the need for a new building after taking the helm of the institution. After a year, he is now leaning more towards remaining in it, conditional on reconstruction and renovation.
However, these would require hundreds of millions of crowns. The poor condition of the building was discussed even before Fajt's arrival. The then-director of the Collection of Modern and Contemporary Art, Helena Musilová, stated in 2013 that the building needs a shell reconstruction, which could reduce significant energy losses. The National Gallery estimated the cost at approximately 250 million crowns, which is more than the annual state subsidy for the entire institution. The building is so demanding to operate that it consumes 78 million crowns from the annual budget of the National Gallery, which is 55 percent of the operational costs of all the National Gallery's buildings. Of this, energy costs amount to 32 million crowns.
The condition of the Trade Fair Palace has been one of the most contentious aspects since Fajt's appointment. He criticized his predecessors for acquiring buildings without a predetermined concept for their use. He believes it is also wrong that the National Gallery has never acquired a building constructed specifically for its needs and exclusively uses buildings built for other purposes at various epochs. Therefore, Fajt began to talk about the possibility of building a new building that could serve not only the National Gallery.
At the beginning of this year, the Ministry of Culture also spoke about a possible multifunctional new building for cultural purposes. Primarily through the then-deputy for live art Miroslav Rovenský, who was dismissed by the Minister of Culture in the spring. Potential cooperation with the capital city is also important, which would likely have to provide the land for the construction. Mayor Adriana Krnáčová (ANO) stated in June that Prague is considering the construction of a new gallery. It could be located in Letná, where Stalin's monument once stood, and the costs would be borne by the state.
Neither Fajt nor the new director of the Collection of Modern and Contemporary Art, Milena Kalinovská, are giving up on the idea of a new building. Perhaps also due to the long time that an architectural competition and construction would take, the director of the National Gallery is currently leaning towards remaining in the Trade Fair Palace.
Next year, according to him, the National Gallery intends to look for a brief for an architectural competition for a grand reconstruction proposal of the palace. "The Trade Fair Palace should be transformed into the main headquarters of the National Gallery after reconstruction, with centralized administration, storage facilities, restoration and technological support, study rooms, a library, and an archive with a public reading room, and above all, exhibition spaces of appropriate standards," says Fajt. At least 60 percent of the exhibition area should be higher than seven meters, whereas most of the exhibition spaces currently have a height of only three meters.
His plans for transforming the Trade Fair Palace involve quite a significant intervention in the building. The large hall would need to be restructured to achieve greater height in the exhibition areas, meaning it would be an insertion into the current building. According to Fajt, the Trade Fair Palace should also be transformed from the outside; he would like to remove the ramp that separates the building from the street. "In collaboration with Prague 7, the National Gallery is involved in the long-term development of the area around the Trade Fair Palace, which will become a natural center of a vibrant artistic quarter," said Fajt.