In the new ministerial council for art, Oleg Haman is also a member

Prague – The newly available Arts Council, which the Minister of Culture now has at his disposal, proposes to maintain the State Culture Fund. The former Minister of Culture Václav Jehlička (KDU-ČSL) had sought to abolish it. A corresponding draft law is already in the chamber. However, last week the MPs postponed it.
    The State Culture Fund was established in the early 1990s to support significant cultural projects and to raise money for them outside of the state budget. Its existence has been plagued by problems with the lottery that was supposed to fund it, but in recent years, the fund has distributed five to ten million crowns several times. However, the distribution of funds was once hindered because the MPs did not elect the necessary members of the fund's council.
    According to Jehlička, the fund was not fulfilling its function, and moreover, the amount of money it had available would not help culture, according to the former minister. He envisioned that the State Culture Fund should have tens of millions of crowns. However, the director of ProCulture and the newly elected chairwoman of the Ministry's Arts Council, Marta Smolíková, points out that even a few million that the fund could distribute annually is not negligible for Czech culture and art.
    "We will prepare a proposal for the Minister of Culture regarding the members of the fund's board, whose last term ended in 2006, and we will present a proposal for its financing options," says Marta Smolíková.
    The Arts Council held its first meeting on Wednesday, consisting of experts, academics, and representatives of the ministry's funded organizations. "We appreciated that the council, which was appointed back in January of last year but had never been convened, finally met and can start working," said Smolíková.
    One of the main topics of the council is the budget for next year. According to Minister Václav Riedlbauch, the budget for his office will be lacking several hundred million crowns. Therefore, he seeks recommendations from the council on priorities for the distribution of funds to support individual areas of art.
    The council emphasized the need to adopt a law on publicly beneficial cultural institutions, which should be presented to the next government. According to long-standing considerations, today's funded organizations could be transformed into publicly beneficial institutions. The council wants to establish methods for evaluating the work of these organizations and to address the management and scope of their directors' powers.
    "It is striking that the directors of state-funded organizations have virtually unlimited powers, which has now been demonstrated by the example of the Czech Philharmonic," Smolíková stated. According to her, directors should be obliged to consult certain fundamental steps not only with the founder, namely the Ministry of Culture, but also with the professional community.
    Alongside Smolíková, the council includes 20 other members, such as literary historian Miroslav Balaštík, theater worker Jan Burian, chair of the Architects' Association Oleg Haman, director of Tanec Praha Yvona Kreuzmannová, director of the National Film Archive Vladimír Opěla, art historian Martina Pachmanová, or head of the ND ballet Petr Zuska.