Four people applied for the position of head of the Trade Fair Palace

Prague - Four candidates applied for the position of director of the Collection of Modern and Contemporary Art of the National Gallery in Prague (NG). However, only two of them, Karolina Dolanská and Richard Drury, fulfilled all the required formal conditions of the application. Nikolaj Savický from NG told ČTK today. Two people were interested in the position of chief curator of contemporary art exhibitions, but only Noemi Smoliková met the conditions of the competition.
According to experts, the number is too low for such a significant cultural institution. "It is a manifestation of complete distrust of the professional public towards the general director of NG, Vladimír Rösel. This is a position that should be very attractive within the field, and for the director, it is a very unflattering business card," said Jan Skřivánek, the editor-in-chief of Art&Antique magazine, to ČTK.
If this had happened a year ago, it would have been possible to speculate that potential candidates were still insufficiently familiar with his work. Rösel has been in office since last June. "Now, however, they have had more than a year to get to know him," Skřivánek added.
Curator and director of the Jindřich Chalupecký Society, Lenka Lindaurová, also believes that after a year of his tenure at NG, Rösel has not convinced true experts that the position of director of the Veletržní palác "is worth it". According to her, many more people apply for similar positions in equivalent institutions in Germany, with more than 50 applicants for the director of the collection position, and even several hundred for the chief curator position, she stated.
She also questioned whom the National Gallery will be able to invite to the selection committee, which has yet to be established. It is to be appointed by October 18. The selection committee is usually appointed upon the announcement of the competition, but its advance composition could limit the number of candidates for the offered positions.
Curator and art theorist Smoliková has primarily worked in Germany, but has also published in the Czech press, and has been with the Central Bohemian Region Gallery in Kutná Hora since June 2011.
Dolanská is dedicated to contemporary art, is a curator at NG, and was involved in preparing the NG 333 Award. Richard Drury, originally from Britain, has been active in the Czech Republic since the early 1990s. He worked for a long time at the then Czech Museum of Fine Arts. He applied for the first of two recent competitions for the director of the National Gallery and more recently also for the head of the Gallery of the Capital City of Prague. This attracted a total of ten candidates.
The position of director of the Collection of Modern and Contemporary Art, which is based in the Veletržní palác, has not been filled since last September when its director Tomáš Vlček left.