Only for the still young lady / 60 years of the Department of the History of Architecture MuMB

Sixty / Solo for the Ever Young Lady
60 years of the Department of History of Architecture

June 23 – December 31, 2022 – Špilberk Castle, Central Wing

Author: Jindřich Chatrný (in collaboration with Dagmar Černoušková, Lucie Valdhansová, Jiří Habarta, Filip Kyrc, and Jiří Pikous)

Architecture (of the feminine gender) is an ageless "Lady". It has accompanied humanity since the dawn of its history. Often avant-garde to the point of being extravagant, inspiring, untamed—sometimes submissive or compliant with its time, yet always transforming.

Brno is a significant "focal point" of twentieth-century architecture, appreciated by both professional and lay audiences. This fact prompted the establishment of the Department of History of Architecture at the Museum of the City of Brno, which was founded on December 1, 1962. The concentration, and especially the exceptional quality of buildings from the interwar period, many of which were beginning to deteriorate or were being reconstructed, soon encouraged Iloš Crhonek, the founder of the collection, to focus on Brno's interwar architecture. He began to gather sketches, drawings, studies, planning documentation, photographs including negatives, writings, building models, furniture artifacts, and other documents related not only to the architecture of Brno in the 1920s and 1930s. The first significant acquisition was the personal collection of architect Bohumil Babánek. This was followed by the archives of other figures of the Czechoslovak architectural avant-garde: Otto Eisler, Bohuslav Fuchs, Jaroslav Grunt, František Kalivoda, Jindřich Kumpošt, Mojmír Kyselka, Josef Polášek, Oskar Poříský, Jan Víšek, Bedřich Rozehnal, and many more. The museum thus houses a unique collection from about sixty Czech and European authors (Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Adolf Loos, Marcel Breuer, etc.). This remarkable work, often gathered to an astonishing extent, is not a lifeless inventory. Especially after the Velvet Revolution in 1989, there was a significant application of the collections. The then-generation of young architects embraced the creative legacy of their predecessors, finding high value standards and impulses for their own work. The collection is very valuable for the preparation of the restoration of modern architectural buildings, many of which are now protected monuments. The methods and construction-craft procedures for restoring this segment of architecture differ somewhat from those of other historical buildings. They cannot be imagined without original planning documentation, photographs, or technical reports. The necessity of these materials was particularly demonstrated in Brno during the construction of the replica of the first strictly functionalist building in Czechoslovakia, which was Zeman's café, or during the respectful restoration of the Tugendhat Villa and the renovation of the Avion Hotel.

The funds are today an irreplaceable source of knowledge, inspiration, and pleasure for entire generations of professionals, but also for lovers of modern architecture both domestically and abroad. Through his enlightened collecting activity, Iloš Crhonek significantly contributed to the preservation of the interwar architecture heritage and the restoration of its democratic tradition. Crhonek's successors are successfully continuing acquisitions and research work, which they present to both specialized and broader audiences in the form of numerous exhibition, lecture, and publication projects. The Department of History of Architecture rightfully ranks alongside not only the National Technical Museum in Prague but also similar cultural institutions around the world in terms of its significance.

An integral part of the department's collections over the years has also become funds closely related to the history of Brno's architecture, originally located in other museum workplaces, including collections of historical furniture, vedutas, and a lapidarium (stone and stone sculpture realizations, tombstones, memorials, commemorative plaques, plaster casts). The number of objects stored in the repositories of this specialized department has exceeded a quarter of a million and continues to grow. This fact has been enhanced in recent years by acquiring personal archives of architects Ivan Ruller, Zdeněk Řihák, Jan Dvořák, Zdeněk Lang, Miroslav Gilwann, Zdeněk Sklepka, Růžena Žertová, and many others.

Visitors to the exhibition will become acquainted with the history of the collection, as well as with the extensive presentation and publishing activities of the department. They will view samples of the most valuable collections associated with names such as Le Corbusier, Frank Lloyd Wright, Jiří Kroha, Emil Králík, Jan Vaněk, Jindřich Halabala, and others. The project of variable visual presentations will be accompanied by a series of lectures with architectural historians and theorists, discussions with family members of the architects or their students. Current information about the exhibits exchanged during the exhibition and about accompanying events will be published on the museum's web and Facebook pages.