Czech museums taking part in International Museums Day events

On May 18th museums in the entire world celebrate their holiday. In order to promote cultural heritage around the planet, UNESCO's International Council of Museums (the ICOM) in 1977 established this date as the International Museums Day. In order to accommodate the needs of their visitors, museums in the Czech Republic have decided to shift the special programs celebrating the International Museums Day from Wednesday May 18th to this coming Sunday.

According to Katerina Tlachova from ICOM, the Czech Republic has a large museum network and the International Museums Day is a great occasion to present it.

"The Czech Republic has long and quite brilliant tradition of museums. We have institutions which rank among the oldest in Europe (or at least in Central Europe) and we also have a very strong tradition in museology - the professional museum work. In the Czech Republic the International Museums Day will be celebrated by museums opening their doors to the wide public this weekend, and as far as we know it involves at least 100 institutions."

The International Museums Day is regularly celebrated in the Czech Republic and its popularity is growing, says Katerina Tlachova.

"I think it has growing popularity and it's more and more reflected by the media. One thing that helps a lot is 'Gloria Musealis' - the national competition of museums which has been launched three years ago by the Ministry of Culture and the Association of Museums and Galleries of the Czech Republic. The results of the competition are announced on the occasion of the International Museums Days."

The International Museums Day events also involve a special charity project called Ticket for Asia which aims to help a museum in Sri Lanka that was affected by the tsunami disaster at the end of the last year.

"Since this year's theme of the Museums Day is 'Museums as Bridges among Cultures', we have decided to help our colleagues and friends in a museum in Sri Lanka - the Museum of Marine Archaeology in Galle which has suffered a lot by the earthquake and tsunami in December last year and has launched a call for help."

"So we are organizing a charity collection, selling postcards which are named 'Ticket for Asia'. Their prize is an equivalent of one entrance ticket to the museum and the money gathered on the basis of the collection will be sent to this particular museum."

Most Czech museums will be open free of charge and also have prepared a special program on Sunday May 22nd. The biggest and the best known museum in the Czech Republic is certainly the National Museum - its main building dominates the very top of Wenceslas Square in Prague. The National Museum is of course also taking part in the International Museums Day and has prepared a few surprises as well. National Museum Director Michal Lukes:

"The National Museum has prepared a sort of standard program for the International Museums Day; first of all on Sunday admission to all our buildings will be free. Then we've prepared a number of additional programs; we will have puppet theatre featuring puppets from our theatre collection. There will be guided tours of our exhibitions."

"If you've found some stones you believe are precious, you can bring them along and our mineralogists would help you to determine what it is and whether it is precious. If you bring a seashell that you've brought from holiday, we will tell you what it is, you will also see handicrafts being made, and so on. There is lots of it."

But even if you come to the National Museum main building any other day, you can see many interesting things. There are permanent exhibitions which exhibit objects from the fields of mineralogy, palaeontology, anthropology and zoology. But also you will find material relating to prehistory in Czech territory, and you can find there a number of contemporary exhibitions on completely different issues.

On Thursday the National Museum opened an exhibition commemorating the 60th anniversary of the end of the Second World War. It is an exhibition about Czech cinema during the war. According the exhibition curator Libor Jun the organizers tried to illustrate the atmosphere of Czech wartime cinema for the visitor.

"The exhibition is focused on film. There will be film screenings, but the exhibition is mainly focused on the atmosphere of that time - the atmosphere in which the films were made. That is why there are so many things here, like film posters or official announcements; they created the environment for the cinema visitors but also for filmmakers, actors etcetera."

Czech cinema had a great tradition dating back to 1930s and 1920s. There were a lot of good films produced in the pre-war Czechoslovakia and when Czech lands were occupied by Germany, Czech filmmakers did not want to give up their efforts to make a good cinema.

"Czechoslovak cinematography before the war was really advanced. But during the war it had to face new challenges, especially the lack of freedom, strong censorship and also state-organized anti-Semitism."

According to Jun, viewers in those days mainly wanted entertainment and humour. But also films with historical motives were popular and in spite of the tough conditions, many good movies were produced during the war.

"A lot of comedies were produced, but there were also films inspired by classic Czech literature. After all, one of the best known film adaptations of the famous novel 'The Grandmother' by Bozena Nemcova was produced at that time. As for the comedies, one of the best known films is 'Kristian' with the famous actor Oldrich Novy or the comedy 'Eva tropi hlouposti' ('Eva Plays the Fool'). These films are successfully screened even today."

So that is one exhibition that has just started in the National Museum, but there are many more to come. Another great opportunity to visit museums will also be during what they call the "Museum Night Festival", when visitors will have the extremely rare opportunity to tour museums during the night. This project has just got underway in Brno, and will culminate in Prague on June 4th. Radio Prague will be there, so if you want to learn more, stay tuned!