The art historian Fajt has been at the helm of the National Gallery since July 2014

photo: National Gallery in Prague

Prague - The business card of the director of the National Gallery Prague (NGP) Jiří Fajt (58), who was dismissed by the Minister of Culture Antonín Staněk (ČSSD):

- Jiří Fajt has been the General Director of the National Gallery Prague since July 1, 2014. He was appointed to the position after a year of waiting. He returned to the gallery after 14 years, having left the institution after the arrival of Milan Knížák, who began to lead the NGP in 1999.

- After Knížák's departure, Fajt participated in the competitions for the General Director of the NGP in 2010 and 2011. In April 2010, the selection committee recommended him for the head of the NGP, but Minister of the caretaker government Václav Riedlbauch left the final decision to the next minister, Jiří Besser, who then announced a new selection process. In May 2011, the selection committee chose economist Vladimír Rösela, and the minister ultimately decided between him and Fajt. He eventually appointed Rösela, who was dismissed in April 2013 by Besser's successor Alena Hanáková. In July 2013, Hanáková decided to appoint Fajt from September 2013, but he ultimately took up the position in July 2014, as her successors at the ministry, Jiří Balvín and Daniel Herman, delayed Fajt's arrival.

- Fajt was born on May 11, 1960. He studied at the Czech University of Life Sciences in Prague (1983) and art history at the Faculty of Arts of Charles University in Prague (1994), later obtaining his habilitation in both the Czech Republic and Germany.

- In the second half of the 1980s, he worked as a window washer. Later, he worked at the Lapidarium of the National Museum in Prague (1988 to 1992). From 1993 to 2000, he was employed at the National Gallery, where he led the Collection of Old Art from 1995. Since 2000, he has primarily worked in Germany, lecturing at universities in Berlin and Prague, including the Faculty of Arts of Charles University.

- As an art historian, he specializes in medieval art, and is the author of numerous publications and articles in domestic and foreign journals, having edited several collections and exhibition catalogs. He has curated many exhibitions, some of the most notable being Magister Theodoricus, Court Painter of Emperor Charles IV, Charles IV, Emperor by the Grace of God, and Europa Jagellonica.

- Fajt is among the trio of scholars that President Miloš Zeman refused to appoint as professors in May 2015, despite them being properly nominated and meeting all the requirements. The appointment of the professor title to Fajt was recommended by the evaluation committee and both scientific councils, the faculty and the university-wide.

- Charles University filed two administrative lawsuits this year, claiming that the president violated the rules for appointing professors and intervened in academic freedoms. Previously, Fajt and physicist Ivan Ošťádal had approached the court. Zeman had to decide again based on last year's ruling, but he did not change his opinion. According to him, the university did not conduct the appointment process properly, and regarding Fajt, he allegedly passed over the fact that he submitted false information.

- Initially, Zeman emphasized regarding director Fajt that he allegedly asked for a top-up to his salary in the form of a sponsorship donation. The art historian criticized in January this year that Zeman has now changed his argumentation and is assessing his professional qualifications. The president mentioned, for example, that according to the materials for Fajt’s current research activity, he was supposed to be the main editor of a nine-volume handbook of the history of art in Central and Eastern Europe, while by the time of the candidate’s evaluation, not even the first volume had been published, so it was a "clearly misleading information." Zeman also raised objections to the fact that Fajt declared himself the main author of the publication The Crown of Bohemia, while he was allegedly "merely a co-editor and co-author" alongside the first editor, whom he did not mention in the materials. From the minutes of the meeting of the Scientific Council of the Faculty of Arts of Charles University, Zeman further inferred that Fajt did not fulfill the requirement of a total pedagogical activity at a university for five years. According to Fajt, Zeman's reasoning for refusing to appoint him as professor is based on false, misleading, and confused information.

- Speculation about Fajt's possible dismissal has been ongoing, but the Minister of Culture has not publicly disclosed specific criticisms against him. Two weeks ago, he stated in the press that he currently has no reason "to doubt his artistic results; we are evaluating the economic ones. I am concerned about the low attendance at the gallery." However, attendance at the gallery under Fajt’s leadership, which began in mid-2014, has been increasing. Last year, it was visited by a total of 711,928 people, while in 2014, the gallery saw 380,000 visitors.

- In July 2015, former NGP chief Milan Knížák wrote in an open letter to Minister of Culture Daniel Herman to immediately dismiss Fajt from the NGP. Knížák asserted in the letter, which he also sent to the president and three other highest constitutional officials, that Fajt does not understand the operations of an art museum, is getting rid of long-time employees, and is indebting the gallery. Fajt was among Knížák's staunchest critics, and their disputes ended up in court. The Constitutional Court rejected Knížák’s complaint against the ruling last July, which previously ordered him to apologize for stating that Fajt had ruined the NGP in the past. This contentious statement was made in 2010 during a Czech Television program Contexts and concerned Fajt’s role as director of the Collection of Old Art in the late 1990s.