<div class="news-item"> <h2>The Critics' Gallery in the Adria Palace Must End After 23 Years, It Did Not Succeed in the Competition</h2> </div>

Prague - The Gallery of Critics must end after the holidays in the premises of the Prague Adria Palace, where it has been located for over 20 years. The current operator of the gallery, the Association of Visual Artists and Theorists, lost the tender issued by the manager of the building Trade Centre Prague (TCP) due to payment issues. This was reported to ČTK by the representative of the manager Ondřej Šrámek. The chairwoman of the association, Vlasta Čiháková Noshiro, stated that she appealed to the council of the capital city and the mayor to assess the legitimacy of the competition. The tender was won by the company Art of All, which operates the online gallery Original Gallery. Marcel Sítník, a partner at Art of All, mentioned that they will establish a physical branch in Adria Palace. The building belongs to the city hall, which is managed by TCP.

Šrámek stated that TCP terminated the contract with the association from 2001 in January of this year and announced a competition in which two companies submitted bids: the Association of Visual Artists and Theorists and Art of All. The association offered about 380,000 CZK per year, while the winning company bid over a million CZK per year. "The competition allowed the evaluation committee to assess not only the offers but also the intentions and experiences of the participants, in which the visual artists did not perform poorly; however, they were still unable to approach the higher offer of the second participant," Šrámek said. He added that TCP must proceed with the care of a diligent manager.

"The lease contract is currently in what is called a signing round. The current tenant will end on July 31, and the premises will then be adjusted for the new tenant for about two months so that the gallery can open by October 1," Šrámek said.

Čiháková Noshiro mentioned that the payment issues arose within the Association of Visual Artists and Theorists because TCP demanded double payments for services from 2022 and refused to conduct a review of the correctness. She added that the requested outstanding amount, nearly 100,000 CZK, has already been paid by the association to participate in the competition.

Čiháková Noshiro told ČTK that she considered the competition to be irregular, which is why she is appealing to the city council and the mayor. She cited as an example that the competition was required to have at least three participants, but there were only two; or that the association was not given the chance to match the winning bid, which TCP had promised them. She added that in the event of the eviction of the Gallery of Critics, the association would look for a new space.

"Normally, it is appropriate to thank the operator for their past activities, at least in the form of offering the Gallery of Critics a substitute space, especially since it had previously operated in the building on the original call for the benefit of the city, but that did not happen," stated the chairwoman of the association.

Starting in October, the company Art of All Original Gallery will operate in the gallery spaces. It is an online gallery that sells works mainly by lesser-known artists. "We will be selling paintings and works that are mostly from our authors, whom we represent in Original Gallery," said Sítník. He added that they plan to hold an exhibition of a new author every two weeks, mentioning Apollon Soben or Jo Pistton, for example. The prices of works by both mentioned range up to 50,000 CZK in the online gallery.