Wannieck gallery can remain in the former factory until November

Brno - The Wannieck Gallery can remain in the premises of the former Vaňkovka factory rented from the Brno city company Jižní centrum until November. The board of Jižní centrum decided on this at its meeting today. Both parties thus gain time for negotiations; the future of the gallery has not yet been definitively determined. Libor Šťástka, the vice-chairman of the board, told ČTK this. The Wannieck Gallery received a notice of termination from the city company due to unpaid rent and was supposed to vacate by the end of March according to the contract.
    "We will not evict anyone, and the events scheduled until November will take place. In the meantime, we will negotiate the next steps and decide what will happen to the building in the future," said Šťástka. Donor of the Wannieck Gallery Miroslav Lekeš wants to have greater certainty regarding the operation of the gallery in its current premises in the future. From the beginning, he has suggested that eviction would most likely lead to the disappearance of the largest contemporary art gallery in the region because it is linked to the premises of the former machine shop of the Vaňkovka factory.
    "Staying only until November would be a problem. If that were the case, I do not intend to invest further effort or money into the gallery, and we would probably start working on its eviction right away," said Lekeš. He would accept the rental until November as a technical solution for extending negotiations. At the time of the notice, the gallery owed the city nearly 500,000 crowns, and the next day it paid the rent. According to Lekeš, the management preferred payments of other invoices over rent; the gallery was not in financial distress. Now, according to Šťástka, the gallery should pay rent in advance to avoid similar situations in the future.
    According to Šťástka, several solutions are open. One of them is the establishment of a foundation for art and culture, which would temporarily borrow the collections of the current Wannieck Gallery. However, Lekeš rejects this. "It is not possible for us to lend things like this. We did not lend them to the Moravian Gallery or the National Gallery," he noted. Everything thus depends on further negotiations with Jižní centrum and a joint agreement.