Museum of Art celebrates 65 years, will focus more on presenting its own collections

Press Release | January 27, 2016

Eleven temporary exhibitions this year will organize the Museum of Art in Olomouc. For example, visitors will see an exhibition of 19th century painting of the Olomouc collections, exhibition of museum collection of drawings or unknown photographs by Jindřich Štreit. The most important project is the exhibition Rustle of Angel Wings. Will performs audience at the Museum of Modern Art and the Olomouc Archdiocesan Museum displaying angels tradition from the Middle Ages to the present. In addition to temporary exhibitions, the museum will offer a newly installed permanent exhibitions in all buildings.

The first exhibition in 2016 will be from February 25 Olomoucka gallery, the fourth and last in a series of exhibitions, which gradually since 1994 viewers acquainted with important paintings from the Olomouc collections. "After the successful exhibitions of Italian, Dutch and Central European painting we will focus on European painting of the nineteenth century. Issue a representative selection of the best works of Czech, Moravian, German, Austrian, but also French, Italian or Spanish painters, "says director Michal Soukup. Among the authors are for example Václav Brožík, Vojtěch Hynais, Antonín Chittussi, Julius Mařák, Antonín Slavíček, Antonín Hudeček, Alfons Mucha, but also foreign painters Gabriel von Max, Hans Makart, Leopold Kupelwieser, Daniel Hernández Morillo nebo Adolf Hölzel.

This year the museum will commemorate 65 years since its inception. Therefore, more space dedicated to the presentation of its rich collections. "The most important thing in this direction will be the April exhibition entitled By charcoal, paintbrush, scalpel…, which will present a collection of drawings. Through the exhibits of our funds we will map the transformation of draughtsmanship from old drawings to almost the present day,"said the head of the Department of Modern and Contemporary Art Gina Renotière. Museum this year will also preparing several exhibitions probes into individual collection areas. The exhibition of drawings collection will complement the intimate exhibition focused on the theme of flowers in drawings of Art Brut authors, from August will museum selectively presents a unique collection of graphic designer 70th to 90th years of the 20th century, which it acquired in 2015, and by the end of November will issue documentation and records action art.

The culmination of the exhibition schedule in the jubilee 65th year of existence of the museum will be from the end of October the exhibition Rustle of Angel Wings. "Sixty years of existence, the Museum of Art, we commemorated the total exhibition From Titian after Warhol, which took place both at the Museum of Modern Art and the Archdiocese Museum. For this years anniversary we also prepare a project that will connect the two buildings Olomouc. We will familiarize you with the long visual tradition of the depiction of angelic beings from the Middle Ages to the present, from themes in which angels play a leading, supporting, or accompanying role, to the "freed" angelic motifs in 20th century art,"explained ambitious project Soukup . Part of the exhibits will come from the collections of the Museum of Art in Olomouc and Olomouc Archdiocesan Museum collections from Archbishop Kromeriz, but a large part will be borrowed from public and religious institutions, private collections and artists studios.

2016 exhibition plan

OLOMOUC PICTURE GALLERY IV
European painting of the 19th century from Olomouc collections
25/2 – 25/9/2016 
Olomouc Archdiocesan Museum / Gallery
For the fourth and last time we will make good use of the long-term research into collections of paintings in Olomouc. Following successful exhibitions of Italian, Dutch, and Central European paintings, we will focus on 19th century painters.  You will enjoy the works of Václav Brožík, Vojtěch Hynais, Antonín Chittussi, Julius Mařák, Antonín Slavíček, Antonín Hudeček, Luděk Marolda, Alfons Mucha, and many others. We will issue a scholarly exhibition catalogue.

Temple of Sciences and Muses
450 years of the Research Library in Olomouc 
7/4 – 12/6/2016
Museum of Modern Art / Salon, Cabinet
The 450th anniversary of the establishment of the Research Library in Olomouc provides an opportunity to present the history and development of the remarkable institution, as well as the diversity of its book collections. The exhibition will be held at three separate venues: Olomouc Museum of Art, Regional Museum in Olomouc, and the Research Library in Olomouc. The Museum of Art will present the most valuable exhibits from the historical funds of the library.

By charcoal, paintbrush, scalpel…
Collection of drawings of the Olomouc Museum of Art
28/4 – 25/9/2016
Museum of Modern Art / Triple Nave
We will map out changes in the art of drawing from ancient times almost up to the present.   However, most of the works will be from the 20th century. You will familiarize yourselves, in an intimate form and installation, with all basic trends from the first half of the 20th century: from Symbolism, Expressionism, Cubism and Civilism, to abstract discharges and surrealism.  The second half of the 20th century will be represented by lyrical and gestural abstraction, experiments from the 1960s, conceptual tendencies, as well as post-modernism. 

Flower blooms and other worlds
28/4 – 25/9/2016
Museum of Modern Art / Gallery
Motifs of blooms and inflorescences in the works of Art Brut artists. The works of renowned artists of Art Brut, which is art in its original, rough state, such as the remarkable paintings of world-famous Anna Zemánková, the fanciful blooms of Cecilie Zemánková, Adéla Ducháčová, Josef Kotzian, Anna Haskel and other, as-yet-unrecognized artists.

Memento Tiziani
19/5 – 15/9/2016
Archdiocesan Museum in Kroměříž, Orlovna Gallery
The loan of Tizians painting Apollo and Marsyas  to an exhibition of Renaissance Art in the Metropolitan Museum in New York inspired an exhibition whose leitmotif will be paraphrases of the world-famous and unique Kroměříž collections.  Organizers from the Orlovna Gallery have already invited over a hundred renowned visual artists.  The National Gallery in Prague, The Museum of Moravian Slovakia, and a number of other institutions are also involved in the project.

In Glory and Praise. A thousand years of spiritual culture in Moravia
Reinstallation of a permanent exhibition
From 2/6/2016
The Archdiocesan Museum of Olomouc was inaugurated on the 1st of June 2006 and so this year we will commemorate ten years of its existence.  Over the ten years of its operation, we have examined possibilities for the presentation of ancient art in historical premises as well as the educational potential of the museum. We will make good use of the experience we have gained in the overall alterations to the exhibition. We will enhance the thematic interconnection of individual sections and make the installation and its content more attractive. We will also extend the exhibition with new and previously unseen exhibits, such as the wings of the Gothic altar of Lubina.  We are working on a guidebook and we will extend the existing offer of educational aids.  In addition to the childrens guidebook and to a collection of narrative self-service sheets, we are going to establish an active visitors zone in the heart of the exhibition. 

Ad maiorem Dei gloriam
2/6 – 25/9/2016 
Olomouc Archdiocesan Museum / Ambit
February is the 300th anniversary of the consecration of the distinguished Baroque Church of Our Lady of the Snow, which is a University church on the one hand and on the other, a church closely related to the activity of the Jesuit Order in Olomouc. In 2016 we will also commemorate the 450th anniversary of the arrival of Jesuits in the city. The exhibition will present the significance of the church in a historical and an art-historical context as well as in the context of the history of Olomouc.

Century of Relativity
Permanent exhibition of the 20th century fine art 
From 30/6/2016
Museum of Modern Art / Gallery, Mansard
Having refurbished the interior, we will reopen a permanent exhibition of the best works from our rich collections of 20th century fine art. 140 exhibits and 120 artists will take us through the tumultuous development of, primarily, Czech modern visual art. The exhibition will be complemented by explanatory texts and, most importantly, by accompanying programmes. We will also extend the offer of self-guided educational activities.

 Jindřich Štreit
Unknown photographs 1978 – 1989
30/6 – 30/10/2016
Museum of Modern Art / Salon, Cabinet
An exhibition held on the birth anniversary of one of the most important Czech photographers who became famous for his documentation of life in the countryside during fading socialism. Even though he presented his works at hundreds of individual and collective exhibitions, both home and abroad, there are still photographs which have not yet been exhibited or published.  Such photographs were taken before 1989. The exhibition and the book are being made in cooperation with the Olomouc Museum of Art and the Institute of Creative Photography, Silesian University in Opava.

Cabinet of Drawings and Graphics
Drawings of ancient masters from the collection of Archbishopric of Olomouc
From 8/9/2016
Archdiocesan Museum in Kroměříž
Only 67 sheets of drawings have been preserved in the Kroměříž ancient drawing collection, yet the set is considered extraordinary and absolutely the equal of the famous collection of paintings. It involves all the past important Italian art centres: Florence, Bologna, Siena, Milan, Genoa, Rome, and Venice.  We will issue a collection catalogue on the occasion of the opening of the Cabinet of Drawings.  Owing to the delicate nature of the material we will not exhibit originals but facsimiles.

Rustle of Angel Wings
Images of angels in visual art from the Middle Ages to the present 
27/10/2016 – March 2017
Museum of Modern Art / Triple Nave
Olomouc Archdiocesan Museum / Gallery
We will familiarize you with the long visual tradition of the depiction of angelic beings from the Middle Ages to the present, from themes in which the angel plays a leading, supporting, or accompanying role, to the "freed" angelic motifs in 20th century art.  Some exhibits come from the collections of the Olomouc Museum of Art and the Olomouc Archdiocese Museum as well as from the Archbishops collections in Kroměříž. However, most exhibits will be borrowed from artists studios and private collections.

Studio Phenomenon
Artists books of students of J. H. Kocman
24/11/2016 – 26/2/2017
Museum of Modern Art / Salon, Cabinet
Works by students of the Studio of Paper and Book, founded in 1998 and managed from that time by Jiří Hynek Kocman, a crucial figure of the Brno Circle and a protagonist of conceptual thinking. His students examine and interpret paper and books with respect to their material, structure, and function.  We will present artists papers, artists books, books - objects, paper-art objects, and installations by students and by Jiří Hynek Kocman.

Action Art I
24/11/2016 – 26/2/2017 
Museum of Modern Art / Gallery
Documents and recordings of performances, happenings, and body art form an extraordinary unit within our collection of photographs and they are an absolutely unique unit on a national scale.  Ladislav Daněk (*1958), in cooperation with the Brno theorist Jiří Valoch (*1946), started to build the voluminous collection of primarily domestic works from the 1960s to the 1980s. Today, the collection includes dozens of items (Milan Knížák, Hugo Demartini, Zorka Ságlová, Petr Štembera, Jan Mlčoch and others).