The Museum of Applied Arts opens a permanent exhibition on the history of design

Prague - Almost six years after the building was made accessible following a major reconstruction, the Museum of Decorative Arts in Prague will open a permanent exhibition. In six thematically divided halls, it presents a picture of European applied arts from antiquity to 21st-century design. A total of 1,300 items are on display from the museum's collection, which consists of half a million exhibits. According to the organizers, the exhibition aims to show how all the objects surrounding a person enter their life and change it in various ways.

"We intentionally chose the opening date of the exhibition, February 7, because on this day in 1885, the first exhibition of the museum, officially established after many years of effort, was made accessible in the newly completed Rudolfinum," said museum director Helena Koenigsmarková to reporters today. The current museum building was built opposite the Rudolfinum in 1899 according to the plans of architect Josef Schulz.

After reconstruction, the building was opened in the spring of 2017. Since then, only temporary exhibitions have been held in it. The reconstruction provided the museum with almost two and a half times more space for exhibitions and displays. A prerequisite for starting the renovation was obtaining a depository, which the museum opened in Stodůlky in Prague in 2016. The long period from the completion of the building to the opening of the exhibition was, according to the director, caused by the simultaneous construction of the depository and the repair of the main building, during which all collections were stored. Later, the preparation was affected by COVID and then the unavailability of necessary materials.

The permanent exhibition is no longer organized chronologically or according to the museum's collections, that is, according to the materials from which the exhibits are made. It is thematically divided according to the use of objects, depending on which human activities or situations they serve. According to the authors, such a division allows a better demonstration of the meaning of the given objects. The first hall, Rituals and Celebrations, offers items that draw the viewer into a world of symbols and representations that were meant to elevate mortals closer to God. The exhibition also includes secular celebrations, from folk festivities and carnivals to guild celebrations, university ceremonies, and national holidays or world exhibitions.

The next hall is called Microcosms: The Royal Kunstkammer and presents famous cabinets of art and rarities that connected the world of natural sciences and philosophy with the world of art. At the forefront of these efforts was the Prague Kunstkammer of Emperor Rudolf II at the turn of the 16th and 17th centuries.

Under the title The Life of Forms, the curators prepared a part of the exhibition that shows how nature has always inspired artistic creation. Another hall is dedicated to the clothing of humanity, showing that clothing not only covers the human body but also shapes it. An installation of 18 types of clothing, along with displays of underwear, presents clothing culture with an emphasis on the formation of the fashion silhouette of the body, as it evolved from the beginning of the 19th to the end of the 20th century.

In the hall dedicated to design and the phenomenon of modernity, the viewer enters the industrial 19th century and moves into the 20th century. The authors of the exhibition show how design connected new knowledge and technologies with the field of artistic creation. The sixth hall, titled Utopia, Cosmos, Play, presents a chapter in the history of Czech art and design, consisting of cosmic inspirations and utopian visions.

The exhibition is complemented by projections and lightboxes. "The goal of the exhibition was not to create a textbook overview of the history of applied arts and design, but to show art in its living movement, in various social roles and functions," said Radim Vondráček, the main author of the exhibition and director of collections and research at the museum.