The plumber has removed Knastová from the head of the National Gallery; for now, Kotková will lead it

Prague - Minister of Culture Oto Klempíř (for the Motorists) today dismissed the General Director of the National Gallery Prague (NGP) Alicja Knastová. The information was confirmed to the Deník N by gallery spokesperson Jana Holcová. NGP will be led in the meantime by the current director of the collection of old art, Olga Kotková.

The minister and the ministry spokesperson Barbora Šťastná have not yet commented on the dismissal. Klempíř’s predecessor Martin Baxa (ODS) wrote on Facebook that the minister should justify his actions. "Silence fuels speculation about a Slovak path," wrote Baxa, referring to concerns from the wider cultural public.

According to Deník N, the ministry plans to announce a selection process for the director of NGP in the coming months. The server, citing two unnamed sources, stated that the reason for Knastová's dismissal included efforts to improve NGP’s attendance. Knastová reportedly indicated in the materials for the selection process in 2020 that NGP had the potential to exceed 700,000 visitors annually. This was followed by the COVID pandemic. Last year, NGP was visited by 555,000 people, 25,000 more than in 2024.

Polish Knastová won the selection process in 2020. She received a mandate for six years and started on January 1, 2021, so she was to conclude this year. Experts at the time considered her appointment by Minister of Culture Lubomír Zaorálek from the Social Democratic Party to be surprising. Her competitors were the director of the Plato Gallery in Ostrava Marek Pokorný and former NGP director Jiří Fajt.

Knastová, a musicologist by profession, previously worked at the Silesian Museum in Katowice. Kotková took over the leadership of the old art collections in 2021 following a selection process.

While introducing this year's season, Knastová spoke of the fact that the contribution from the Ministry of Culture for NGP is not increasing proportionately to expenses. According to Knastová, NGP, whose budget is around half a billion crowns annually, can invest less and less money into its exhibitions.

"While in 2019 it was possible to invest 110 million crowns into exhibition projects, which represented approximately 23 percent of our total expenses, in 2025 we could only spend 54 million crowns on exhibitions, just 11 percent," Knastová said at the end of January. This year, it is expected to be about 51 million crowns.

NGP is celebrating 230 years since its establishment this year, which is linked to the founding of the Society of Patriotic Friends of Art on February 5, 1796. In the capital, it has six buildings with permanent exhibitions or displays, and exhibitions are also held in the Valdštejn Riding School, which belongs to the Senate. The gallery manages the largest collection of artworks in the Czech Republic, from antiquity to the present.

Kotková studied at the Faculty of Philosophy and the Faculty of Education of Charles University in Prague, where she obtained her doctorate in 2013. She completed foreign internships, for example in the Netherlands, the USA, and Great Britain. At NGP, she focused primarily on German, Austrian, and Dutch painting and sculpture of the 15th and 16th centuries, and dealt with Rudolfine painting and Flemish painting of the 17th century. Last year, she was the main curator of the successful exhibition Women, Masters, Artists at the Valdštejn Riding School.