The Exhibition as Medium. Czech Art 1957–1999

The comprehensive publication Pavlína Morganová – Terezie Nekvindová – Dagmar Svatošová, Výstava jako médium. České umění 1957−1999 [The Exhibition as Medium. Czech Art 1957−1999], AVU, Prague 2020 is focused on the history of exhibitions in Czech art 1957−1999 and it is an outcome of the five-year research of the VVP Research Center of the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague. The research was based on institutional and personal archives, magazines from that period and many other documents of these fleeting events. The findings are presented in the comprehensive publication by The book, which has over 1,000 pages, is examining changes in the exhibition of fine arts in post-war Czechoslovakia through the reconstruction of sixty carefully chosen exhibitions with ample pictorial documentation. The archive of exhibitions divided into five periods is presented by three independent studies that follow the methodology of the current exhibition discourse, the history of exhibitions and the transforming institutional conditions for exhibitions in the examined period, as well as an unprecedented look at the exhibitions’ creators and organizers – today called curators. An exhibition is understood in the book as an autonomous format of cultural production, but also as a tool to assert certain forms of art, its functions and public legitimization. The book provides a new perspective on previous interpretations of the development of Czech art after 1957. Although it deals with history, it also raises questions that are directly based on the form of contemporary art and its current issues.

Layout: Adéla Svobodová
Photo: Jiří Thýn
DPC: 1.900,- Kč