New museum exhibition in Nelahozeves celebrates Antonín Dvořák
A new museum exhibition in Nelahozeves connects renowned composer Antonín Dvořák’s music with the spirit of his birthplace. The exhibition emphasizes sound and music, with visitors accessing the experience through special audio guides that detail the composer’s life from his humble origins to global fame. The exhibition opened on June 28.
Antonín Dvořák (1841-1904) was born in the small village of Nelahozeves in Central Bohemia, 35 km north of Prague. Antonín spent most of his childhood immersed in music, first hearing the organ and local singers at St. Andrew's Church, located opposite his home. The new museum exhibition presents the Central Bohemian village as it appeared in the mid-19th century, during Dvořák’s youth.
I interviewed the Curator and Program Manager of the Antonín Dvořák Birth House, Eleonore Kinsky, who was personally involved with setting up the exhibition from when the project started in 2019.
“First, it was just about researching, and then I became a curator, so I had the chance to influence the concepts, the main ideas, and the main story we wanted to tell by choosing objects, interactive things, even inventing the mechanism of a specific interactive table, which, of course, was a lot of fun. So, it shifted from research to meeting with people, writing texts, of course, and being very involved with the creative process of the exhibition.”
The exhibition’s focus is on Dvořák’s childhood, but Ms. Kinsky shared that there were not many objects that remained from his childhood, so the focus was on period objects that were not part of any collections. She explained what tools and stories visitors can expect to see when coming to the exhibition:
“Well there’s actually one object that remains from his childhood, which is a little prayer book that was gifted to him by Prince Lobkowicz – and we will have that in the exhibition.
“There are a lot of stories from his childhood but there are a lot of things we managed to reconstruct that we could find in archives or stories from people around him, the teacher, the priest, his parents that paint a picture.”
In setting up the exhibition, Ms. Kinsky mainly consulted ethnologists. She explained that she needed to know what people were wearing, and eating, the furniture they would have, houses, and flooring. This was all to make the exhibition as close as possible to what Dvořák would have in his childhood.
Ms. Kinsky’s background in musicology, as a trained classical musician, also helped her set up the exhibition.
“Of course I think I got the job because I am a musicologist, so I was trained to know about classical music and Dvořák is a classical musician. So, this came easily. Something I wasn’t so knowledgeable about was the popular music of the time and it was really interesting to learn more about it and see the parallels between Dvořák and his music. And, of course, also to learn these other historical facts that always influence each other. The more you know of the context, the more a real image is created.”
The house is managed by Lobkowicz Collections, o.p.s., a non-profit organization founded by the Lobkowicz family to oversee cultural and educational activities.
