New cultural organization Museum+ is set to take care of the Vítkovice blast furnaces

Prague – The Ministry of Culture has established its new contribution organization in Ostrava. It is named Museum+ and its purpose is the restoration of the blast furnaces in Lower Vítkovice, which are a national cultural monument. This was announced today by the spokesperson of the Ministry of Culture, Michaela Lagronová. The operating costs of the organization in the coming years are expected to be approximately four million crowns per year, including temporary rental of space in Lower Vítkovice and personnel costs for employees.

Museum+ will be the 30th contribution organization of the Ministry of Culture. The next one is expected to be the Prague Memorial of Silence, which commemorates the fates of Jewish inhabitants of Prague during World War II. The main goal of this memory institution will be education and the fight against xenophobia, anti-Semitism, and other contemporary extremist manifestations in society.

In the first phase, the newly established organization is expected to prepare a project for the revitalization of the area and its financing from European funds. "I am very glad that in Ostrava, the third largest city in the Czech Republic, a cultural institution will finally be established. It will contribute to the development of the region, which has been unjustly neglected by the state in terms of culture in the past," stated the Minister of Culture, Lubomír Zaorálek (ČSSD). Museum+ will be the first state cultural organization in the Moravian-Silesian Region.

The Ministry hopes that its establishment will lead to the preservation of the monument and the creation of an institution that will attract domestic and foreign visitors to the Moravian-Silesian Region. Along with the director of the organization, three other employees will be involved in its operation, who will be based in the Lower Vítkovice area from May.

Until the conclusion of the selection process for the director's position, Jaroslav Dvořák, a longtime deputy director of the Beskydy Museum in Frýdek-Místek and also the chairman of the working group at the Ministry of Culture that prepared the project, has been appointed to manage the contribution organization. The establishment of the institution follows the signing of a memorandum about the project "Rescue and Revitalization of Part of the National Cultural Monument – Blast Furnaces 4 and 6 in the Lower Vítkovice Area" between the Ministry of Culture, the Moravian-Silesian Region, the city of Ostrava, and the registered association Lower Vítkovice Area.

The industrial complexes of Lower Vítkovice in Ostrava are the most visited place in the Moravian-Silesian Region and are also among the most popular tourist destinations in the Czech Republic. In 2019, they were visited by 1,675,029 people, which was a visitor record at the time; in 2018, there were 19,500 fewer visitors. Notable sites within the industrial complexes include the Gong auditorium, the World of Technology, the Bold Tower, and the Landek Park mining museum in Ostrava-Petřkovice.

The Lower Vítkovice Area Association was established in 2007. The production of raw iron ceased in Lower Vítkovice in 1998, and since then, the area has undergone transformations worth hundreds of millions of crowns. Part of the industrial complex is a national cultural monument.