Zaorálek dismissed Morávek from the NGP and appointed an interim director

Prague - Minister of Culture Lubomír Zaorálek (ČSSD) has revoked Ivan Morávek's appointment to lead the National Gallery Prague (NGP). He appointed Anne-Marie Nedoma as the temporary director, who will manage the institution until a new general director is chosen from the competition. Zaorálek announced this to reporters today. Nedoma will take on her role on Friday, he added. He also established a guarantee council that will primarily work on preparing the competition and appointing members of the commission that should select the new head of NGP.

The guarantee council includes architect Josef Pleskot, art historian Jiří Machalický, curator Richard Drury, director of the National Heritage Institute Naďa Goryczková, founder of DOX center Leoš Válka, and director of the National Technical Museum Karel Ksandr. Pleskot and Válka were among the initiators of the petition for the departure of former Minister of Culture Antonín Staněk (ČSSD).

"I have decided that I would appoint Mrs. Anne-Marie Nedoma as the temporary director of the National Gallery, so that we can conduct a certain analysis of the situation at the NGP, a certain audit, a technical-organizational-financial audit, and prepare the NGP for the arrival of a new director," Zaorálek said. Morávek allegedly assured him that the gallery's exhibition plan is ready and work is progressing according to it.

The significant domestic collection institution has been without a proper director since April, when its then-director Jiří Fajt was dismissed by former Minister of Culture Antonín Staněk (ČSSD). The reason given was serious economic misconduct. This step led to protests and sparked discussions about Staněk's departure from office. Just before he left the ministerial position after submitting his resignation to President Zeman, Staněk announced a selection procedure for Fajt's successor. Zaorálek canceled it upon taking office at the ministry.

Nedoma told reporters that her work at NGP will primarily focus on preparing a functioning institution - from an administrative, financial, and organizational perspective. "Simply preparing the institution for the new director, which will support his operation and his longer-term visions," she said. "I will try to be a good builder so that NGP is reconstructed, or rather built much more firmly than it currently stands in the position of Czech cultural policy," said Pleskot.

"To select him (the NGP director), I decided to establish a guarantee council and I asked Mr. Architect Pleskot to become the chairman of this guarantee council," said the minister. "It should now begin working fairly intensively to set the parameters for the selection procedure based on the information we have, and also how we will establish a selection commission that will choose the NGP director. This process will take some time," he stated.

According to Zaorálek, the guarantee council should also define what the National Gallery should be. "So that even those who will apply later know exactly what is expected of them," he explained. Although there is a statute for NGP, it is evident according to him that the institution appeared differently during the tenure of Milan Knížák than during the time when Jiří Fajt succeeded him after other directors.

The council should also determine how to regularly assess or monitor the situation of the NGP - to avoid the situation where "we have a gallery completely isolated from the world," which, according to the minister, has happened. He believes that the current crisis at NGP is not a question of the last two or three years, but rather a history of struggling in the post-revolutionary development of NGP. The guarantee council should prevent this.

Anne-Marie Nedoma is the wife of the director of the Rudolfinum Gallery, Petr Nedoma. Zaorálek stated today that the fact that the temporarily appointed NGP director has been in partnership for 35 years with a well-known domestic director of a significant institution, which is also state-established like NGP, indicates that she is familiar with and well-oriented in the environment.