What are the origins of the collections?

The Czech Republic is among the countries with a long tradition of collecting various objects and building museum collections. Unlike some other European countries, the Czech Lands have not been affected by major war events and mass looting for more than 300 years, so that the collections are rich and remarkably preserved. In the 19th century, the nobility enjoyed a very good financial status and were able to bring to the Czech Lands objects of cultural value from other countries, even from overseas. As a result, the collections contain a total of more than 65 million movable items, natural and human-made objects that witnessed both distant and recent events and phenomena and are therefore maintained in the collections as an important source of historical memory. Alongside archival documents, cultural monuments and other objects of cultural value, collections represent the movable cultural heritage of the community that has been living in the Czech Lands for many centuries. But how did it all begin? In what ways have museums been developing until now?

From the history of collecting in the Czech Lands

Let us first look at the period of Christian collecting activities, characterised by creating what is called temple treasures. The treasure of the St. Vitus Cathedral in the Prague Castle is the most important of them. It was first described back in 1069 and includes the famous parts of St. Wenceslas' armour, i.e. helmet, chainmail and sword, and the relics of St. Vojtěch (Adalbert), which were brought by Prince Břetislav from Poland to Bohemia in 1039. The treasure won the greatest renown in the era of King and Emperor Charles IV.

img Charles IV (1316-1378) was a very assiduous collector of relics, including tokens of the earthly life and passion of Christ and tokens of the life of the saints, and their relics. In the Charles IV era, starting from 1350, parts of the St. Vitus treasure and other relics were exhibited from time to time. One of those exhibitions, installed in the chapel at the Cattle Market Square (now Charles' Square) was visited in 1369 by a hundred thousand people. Charles IV himself described how he had acquired further relics when his uncle, Archbishop and Prince Elector Balduin, died in Trier: "We saw there the relics we had long and passionately desired to have. Notwithstanding that we later could lawfully and without any qualms receive large sums of money from the newly elected Archbishop and from the Chapter of the Trier church, our royalty spurned it and thought it better to acquire from the clergy and the Chapter treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust spoils, and where thieves do not dig through nor steal."

In the Renaissance period, in which the definition of the world by reference to God was ever more frequently complemented by "earthly" references, conditions were very favourable to collecting. We should at least mention here the collecting activities of brother of Emperor Maxmilian II Archduke Ferdinand of Tirol (1529-1595), who was Governor of Bohemia in 1548-1567. He created an extensive collection and kept it in the Křivoklát Castle. When he left his position as Governor, he moved his collection to Innsbruck, where it is still maintained in the Ambras Castle. The collection contains minerals, fossils, arms, astronomical instruments, clocks, glass objects, jewels, musical instruments and paintings.

The most important and most famous collector of the period at the turn of the 16th and 17th centuries was Emperor Rudolf II. (1552-1612). He held his collections in the Prague Castle. He had agents working for him all over Europe, seeking new objects that could be added to the Emperor's collections. Even the imperial ambassadors to the royal courts in Italy and Spain were involved in those efforts. The inventory books preserved from the period before the Thirty-Year War give us an idea of how large the collections were. They included works of art and handicrafts, astronomical instruments, clocks, Turkish, Persian, Indian and Hungarian arms, sets of rhinoceros horns, precious stones, natural curiosities. This collection was destroyed in the last year of the Thirty-Year War, when the Prague Castle was occupied by the Swedes, and what remained undestroyed was taken away as spoils of war. The preserved part of the collection was displayed in 1997 at an extensive exhibition entitled "Rudolf II and His Era". As to the Czech nobility, Petr Vok of Rožmberk also had a large "arts chamber".

In the 18th century, Prague Bishop Jan Rudolf Sporck (1694-1759) was one of the most important collectors, whose collections included objects of nature, works of art, medals, coins etc. The collections do not exist now, but what has been preserved are drawings of the objects, which Sporck drew himself. It is important that he also drew the pieces of furniture in which the collection was deposited.

img Numerous castle, monastery and palace art galleries were also established in the 18th century. The most famous and largest of them is the Lobkowicz Art Gallery of Roudnice, which has been fully preserved and is now installed in the Nelahozeves castle. It contains more than 900 works of art, including late Renaissance portraits of the Rožmberks, Pernštejns and Lobkoviczs, paintings of the Spanish masters Pantojo de la Cruz, Danchez Coello and Andreas Lopez, Netherlands paintings of the 16th and 17th centuries, as well as Italian (Canaletto) and Czech (Petr Brandl). The Kolovrat Gallery at Rychnov nad Kněžnou is another important and well- preserved castle gallery, containing the works by Karel Škréta, Jan Jakub Hartman, hunting still-lives by Jan B. Bouttats and Isaak Godyn. The Colloredo art gallery in the Opočno Castle, Lobkowicz castle gallery in Mělník and others are also well known. The archiepiscopal Gallery in the Kroměříž Castle is the most famous church gallery.

As education and schools developed in the 18th century, numerous school cabinets were also established. The "Mathematical Museum" in Klementinum, Prague, established in 1722, is the most famous of them. Part of its collections has been preserved until the present time.

Science, a new phenomenon that profoundly influenced the 19th century, already marked the end of the 18th century. Scientific approaches were also reflected in the collecting activities. The important collections of this type include the collections of Count František Josef Pachta (pictures, numismatics, books), Count František Antonín Hartig (zoological preparations). Some burghers also became collectors at that time, and new monastery collections were established and the existing ones were extended. For example, the collection of the Prague printer and publisher Jan Ferdinand of Schönfeld, which was already called the "Schönfeld Museum", was among the largest collections of that era. In 1799 the collection was moved to Vienna and its catalogue was issued when Schönfeld died in 1825. We know from it that this collection contained an unbelievable number (50 thousand) items, including engravings, paintings, coins, books, arms, clocks, minerals etc. Natural objects were collected by Count František Josef Kinský and Knight Ignác Born. When the "Private Learned Society" was established in Prague, Count Kinský planned to establish a "Czech Museum" to document the natural riches of the Czech Kingdom. Ultimately his collection became part of the "Natural Science Cabinet" of the Prague University. Ignác Born sold his mineralogical collection to England. However, the most famous natural science collection from that time is that built by Count Kašpar Šternberk: this botanical, geological and paleonthological collection later became a basis of the collections of the National Museum. The "Cabinet of Curiosities" in the Premonstrate Monastery in Prague-Strahov is also very well-known. It has been preserved in its original installation until the present time.

History of Czech, Moravian and Silesian Museums and Galleries

The National Gallery in Prague has the longest history, reaching back to the last decade of the 18th century. This gallery of fine arts developed from the private collection of the Society of Patriotic Friends of Art.

img Count Kinský's plan (mentioned above) to establish a "Czech Museum" was probably a source of inspiration for Leopold Jan Šeršnik to establish the Museum in Těšín in 1802. Šeršnik, prefect of the local Gymnasium (High School), donated his extensive collections of books, manuscripts, documents and natural objects to the City of Těšín and established the museum in a building he himself had bought. Historians of Czech museums sometimes omit this important museum, because it has been outside the boundaries of the state since 1918.

The actual history of museums in the Czech Lands began in 1814 with the establishment of the museum in Opava in the house of the local Gymnasium. The museum was built around the collections of Professor Faustin Ens and the retired army officer and amateur botanist František Mükusch of Buchberg. Today's Silesian Museum in Opava has developed on that basis.

In Brno, the "Moravian-Silesian Society for the Support of Agriculture, Soil Science and National History and Geography" issued a memorandum proposing the establishment of a museum in 1816. They drew inspiration from the Styrian Museum Joanneum in Graz, Austria. The Moravian Museum, seated in Brno, was then established by Imperial Decision of 29 June: when issuing his decision, Emperor Franz I agreed to give the museum his name, Francisceum. The three men who played the most important role in establishing the Moravian Museum were the then Moravian Governor Count Antonín Bedřich Mitrovský, entrepreneur and scientist Count Hugo František Salm and teacher of the Evangelic School Kristian Karel André.

The Styrian Joanneum was also looked at as model for establishing the National Museum in Prague. The already mentioned Count Kašpar Šternberk was its founding father, who already had fostered the idea from 1814, but the direct initiative was launched by František Klebelsberk. On 15 April 1818, High Burggrave František A. Kolovrat issued a proclamation to establish the National Museum. A similar initiative was developed by the group around Josef Jungmann, who formulated clearly national targets from the very beginning. The process was crowned by Proclamation of 25 April 1818, by which the new institution was to be not only a museum of history and natural history, but also a scientific and enlightenment institution.

img Although the National Museum was also a "Land Museum" for Bohemia (Moravia had its land museum in Brno and Silesia in Opava), it was clearly oriented (unlike those two other Land Museums) to the assertion of Czech identity, and it soon became a centre of emancipation of the Czech majority community in all the Czech Lands. National awareness was also encouraged by the establishment in 1822 of the National Museum Society, which, by its articles, was the "supporter and administrator" of the collections of the National Museum. The Museum's founding father Kašpar Šternberk became the first Chairman of the National Museum Society. The journal Časopis vlasteneckého musea [Nationalist Museum Journal] was established in 1827; it is the oldest scientific periodical in the Czech Lands, appearing at present under the name Časopis Národního musea [National Museum Journal]. Its first editor in chief was František Palacký, who later, in 1841, became managing director of the Society and had a significant influence on the development of the National Museum. He based his approach to the Museum on the principle that "the Museum should not be an end itself. It must meet the needs of the Czech country and nation".

As many as 49 new museums and museum societies were established in Bohemia and Moravia in the period of 1864 - 1890. The oldest of them include Archeologický a muzejní spolek Včela čáslavská [the Čáslav Bee Archaeological and Museum Society] in Čáslav (1864), Muzejní společnost [Museum Society] in Chrudim (1866), Městské museum [Municipal Museum] at Vysoké Mýto (1871), Besední museum [Clubhouse Museum] at Třebenice (1872), Muzejní společnost města Německého Brodu [Museum Society of the City of Německý Brod] (1874), Museum okresu hlineckého [Museum of the Hlinsko District] at Hlinsko v Čechách (1875) and Archeologický sbor Wocel [Wocel Archaeological Corps] in Kutná Hora (1877). The mission of all these museums and museum societies was to develop regional collections and to support and complement the collecting activities of the National Museum. They were as a rule focused on the documentation of nature and society in their respective regions.

Besides Czech and Moravian museums, a number of museums were also established in regions where German population prevailed, for example, at Kraslice (1867), Karlovy Vary (1870), Cheb (1873), České Budějovice (1875), Most (1880), Mariánské Lázně (1887), Vrchlabí (1890), Šluknov (1890) and elsewhere.

Regional museums also had their outstanding characters - for example, the Managing Director of the "Čáslav Bee" Society Kliment Čermák or K.V. Adámek at Hlinsko v Čechách.

A remarkable and exceptional impetus for the rise of a number of new museums came with the two famous exhibitions in Prague: the General (Jubilee) Exhibition in 1891and, in particular, the Czecho-Slavonic Ethnographical Exhibition in 1895. A large quantity of various items was collected for the Ethnographical Exhibition and, thereby, sufficient material was provided for a number of the so-called country exhibitions, many of which developed into new museums.

img The creation of new museums, focusing on specialised areas rather than on general natural history, was also encouraged by the establishment of the Chambers of Commerce and Trades to support business in Prague, Liberec, Plzeň, České Budějovice, Brno, Olomouc and Opava. Following the pattern of the "Austrian Museum for Art and Industry" in Vienna, established in 1863, applied art museums were established with the Chambers in Liberec and Brno in 1873. Museums with a similar focus were then also created in areas with the German-speaking population, including České Budějovice and Ústí nad Labem, and museums of glass at Nový Bor (1866) and Jablonec nad Nisou (1900). In the Czech regions similar museums were built in Hradec Králové (1881), Prague (1885), Plzeň (1886), Chrudim (1892) and Hořice (1904).

The abovementioned Ethnographical Exhibition also gave rise to the Czecho- Slavonic Ethnographical Museum in Prague (1895), and an open-air museum was established at Rožnov pod Radhoštěm in 1911. Other specialised museums then followed - for example Sokolské Museum (1914), focused on the area of physical training.

The Applied Arts and Technology Museum in Kensington, England, enthused Vojta Náprstek to build a technical museum in Prague (1862). However, this museum gradually shifted its focus to documentation of non-European ethnography and still continues its activities as Náprstkovo [Náprstek's] Museum under the National Museum. A "really technical" museum, the Technical Museum of the Kingdom of Bohemia, was only established in 1908, after a large exhibition of the Chamber of Commerce and Trades. The year 1906 saw the establishment of the Jewish Museum in Prague. The core of the collections consists of the objects taken from the synagogues demolished during the redevelopment at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries of the area where the Prague Jewish Ghetto was located.

img Museums continued developing after the rise of the Czechoslovak Republic in (1918). The Union of Czech Natural History Museums was established in September 1919, associating 46 museums of the total number of 94. From 1924, the Union comprised all types of museums, not only those of natural history, and was authorised by the Ministry of Culture and National Enlightenment to be responsible for the organisational and professional care of Czechoslovak museums. The Agricultural Museum was established in Prague in 1918, and soon afterwards followed the Military Museum, Postal Museum and Medical Museum. Gallery in Ostrava was built in 1926. Meanwhile, the number of regional natural history and geography museums continued increasing.

The period of World War II and the occupation of the Czech Lands was naturally a period of stagnation, but the damages to the collections were not great. The greatest losses included the war damage to museums in Žďár nad Sázavou, Opava and Ostrava; bombs damaged the National Museum in Prague and the museum in České Budějovice, and fire affected the archaeological collections of the Moravian Museums, deposited in the Mikulov Castle. In 1942-1945, the Central Jewish Museum was built on the basis of the synagogal collections of the Jewish Museum. Its establishment was initiated by the Jewish Religious Community in Prague and its purpose was to save the liturgical objects and equipment of the synagogues of the Jewish communities at the time when the Jewish population was being transported to concentration camps. The objects were collected from 153 Czech and Moravian sites and were very carefully registered and maintained under constant supervision of the Nazi Office Zentralstelle für jüdische Auswanderung: under their perverse genocidal programme, the Nazis planned to build a "museum of the extinct race", yet the Jewish specialists in the museum were trying to save the valuable objects of Jewish heritage, and they succeeded to a remarkable extent.

After World War II, in 1946, there were about 360 museums and memorials in the Czech Lands, which had preserved about 4 million collection items. The first task was to safeguard the collections of museums in the Sudetenland territory.

img After 1948, Czech museums were transferred to the ownership of the state. The majority of the museums were controlled by Ministries and by National Committees [regional and local government authorities]. The National Gallery in Prague was established on the basis of Act No. 148/1949 as a state-controlled museum of fine arts. All museum clubs and associations were dissolved, including, later on (in 1960), the Union of Czechoslovak Museums. The impact of the involvement of the State in museum work was felt in the collecting activities but manifested itself primarily in the presentation area: many exhibitions and expositions reflected the ideological trend of that time and were involved in falsifying history and supporting various doctrines. Special-purpose museums were built in the 1950s to promote the new regime, e.g. the Klement Gottwald Museum and V.I. Lenin Museum in Prague. However, some of the initiatives of that time were praiseworthy, for example, the establishment of the Museum of Czech Literature in Prague, Alois Jirásek Museum [Jirásek was a historical novelist], or the Museum of Physical Culture and Sports. The Central Jewish Museum in Prague was also nationalised and the State Jewish Museum was established in 1950.

In 1959 the National Assembly [Parliament] adopted Act No. 54/1959 on Museums and Galleries, which (with the experience we know have) can be considered as a praiseworthy deed. The good thing was that this Act was adopted when the worst extremes of the 1950s were over and when at the same time, specialists with experience from pre-war museum work could take part in the formulation of the law. In spite of that period's phraseology used in the text, the Act at least partially reflected the efforts reaching back to the 1930s. It created, more or less, a good legal framework for the work of Czech museums (and a similar Act was passed in Slovakia) and remained in force until 2000. The implementation of the Act brought about effective professionalisation of museum work in the 1960s and 1970s. This led to a significant growth of collections. In the latter half of the 1960s, Czech museum workers also started earning international respect, particularly within the UNESCO/ICOM non-governmental organisation and in the museology area.

img The 1950s and 1960s also saw the rise of a number of galleries as specialised fine arts museums. In the 1950s, galleries were established, e.g., in Jihlava (1950), Litoměřice (1951), Hluboká nad Vltavou (1952), Olomouc (1952), Zlín (1953), Hradec Králové (1953), Karlovy Vary (1953), Liberec (1953), Pardubice (1954), Plzeň (1954), and in the 1960s in Hodonín (1960) and Cheb (1961), and by the end of the 1960s also in Louny, Klatovy, Náchod, Roudnice nad Labem, Rychnov nad Kněžnou and other places.

After an attempt in 1968 to lessen the influence of the State on museums and renew the Museum Union, the so-called "normalisation" process followed in the 1970s and 1980s (under Soviet occupation), also affecting museums. Government bodies drew up a number of various pseudo-conceptions for museum development, the actual purpose being to ensure easy control and direction rather than the development of museums. Czech museums began to lag significantly behind European museums in two major areas: in the space, material and equipment available to them and in the provision of services to visitors. In most of the museums, the collections (comprising 60 million items in 1989, fifteen times more than in 1946!) were deposited in an entirely unfit manner and were poorly processed and difficult to utilise. The condition of many buildings that housed the collections was near the state of disrepair: some collection storage facilities had leaky roofs and the collection items were exposed to harmful environmental effects. To improve this situation was, and still is, the most important task.

It was therefore necessary after 1989, first of all, to invest money into Czech museums, including their premises and their technical and material conditions. These efforts have already brought positive results: investments from public funds exceeded 3 billion crowns, much more than ever before. Dozens of modern premises for the storage of the collections have been built and dozens of other buildings have been refurbished. Museums were equipped with computers almost overnight; equipment of conservation and restoration workshops has been gradually improving and many new displays have been developed. Most of the premises where the collections are kept are equipped with security and fire alarm systems. The Association of Museums and Galleries of the Czech Republic and Gallery Council of the Czech Republic were established in 1990 to represent the professional public and to take part, together with the public administration bodies, in the organisation and management of museums. The Czech Committee of ICOM (international non-governmental organisation under the UNESCO) has been reorganised. As a result, the nature of the relations between State administration and museums has quickly changed, although most of the museums and galleries are still financially dependent on subsidies from public funds.

img The collections and buildings of the State Jewish Museum in Prague were returned to the Federation of the Jewish Communities and the Jewish Community in Prague in 1994. The State Jewish Museum was transformed in 1994 into an association of legal entities under the name Jewish Museum in Prague. During the reform of public administration at the turn of the 20th and 21st centuries, 90 museums and galleries were transferred from the hands of the State to regional governments, 20 remained State-owned, and the remaining museums and galleries are run by municipalities and other legal entities or private persons as their founders.

At present, Czech museums have about 65 million collection items, held in 300 collections (including about 2.5 thousand specialised "subcollections", focused on specific areas), 282 museums and galleries, most of them being legal entities in their own right, which themselves have more than 500 branches and outstations. Thus there are about 800 premises referred to as "museums" or "galleries" in the Czech Republic (the term galleries being used for museums specializing in fine arts). The founders of museums and galleries are, for the most part, Ministries (20 museums and galleries), regional municipalities (90 museums and galleries) and local municipalities. This basic museum network is complemented by museums and galleries founded by other legal entities and private persons. Museums and galleries employ more than 5 thousand persons and have about 400 permanent exhibition installations open to public. Every year museums and galleries prepare more than 2000 short-term exhibitions and hundreds of museum programmes, and issue periodical and non-periodical publications, and are every year visited by about 7.5 million people! Museums and galleries are also important scientific institutions, studying the collections and conducting scientific research of the environment from where the collection items were obtained. They provide valuable information about nature and society to the general public and to the public administration authorities. They also co-operate with museums and galleries in other countries.

The largest museums and galleries with the richest collections in the Czech Republic include the National Museum, National Gallery in Prague, Jewish Museum, National Technical Museum, National Agricultural Museum, Museum of Applied Arts, Museum of Czech Literature, Moravian Land Museum in Brno, Silesian Land Museum in Opava, Moravian Gallery in Brno, Technical Museum in Brno, Wallachian Open-air Museum at Rožnov pod Radhoštěm, Terezín Memorial with expositions also in Auschwitz (Poland) and Ravensbrück (Germany), the Hussite Museum in Tábor, Glass and Jewellery Museum in Jablonec nad Nisou, Military Museum in Prague, Postal Museum in Prague, Museum of the City of Prague, and Gallery of the City of Prague . Rich collections are also on display in the Regional Museum and Gallery at Roztoky u Prahy, Liberec, Teplice Plzeň, Karlovy Vary, Cheb, České Budějovice, Hluboká nad Vltavou, Jihlava, Pardubice, Hradec Králové, Ostrava, Olomouc, the Museum of the City of Brno, the Ostrava Museum and many regional museums in the former district capitals, and elsewhere. Interesting collections can also be seen in a number of specialised smaller museums, such as, for example, the Museum of Puppet Cultures in Chrudim, Jan Ámos Komenský [Comenius] Museum in Uherský Brod, and galleries in Litoměřice, Roudnice nad Labem, Louny, Náchod, Hodonín, Nové Město na Moravě, Havlíčkův Brod. Some smaller municipal museums also maintain and display valuable collections.

img Maintaining the collections as such is not the end itself for museums and galleries: the actual purpose of their existence and the reason for financing them from public funds is to gain more knowledge and new findings about nature and society, which people need for the formation of adequate attitudes. Collections only represent a means to gain the needed findings, often the only means for which there is no substitute: as such, collections represent an important part of the country's cultural heritage and treasure. Information about nature and society, of which the collections are a source, is available not only in museums and galleries but also in textbooks and other reading materials, in scientific and popular literature, in films and on the web . Such information is accompanying us throughout our life, whether or not we are visitors of museums and galleries. Without it our idea of the world would be incomplete, false, or even absurd. This is the main reason why museums and galleries are subsidised from public funds, i.e. from taxpayers' money. Other reasons include the ability of the collections to represent the Czech Republic and its nature and history at exhibitions both domestically and internationally and contribute to the general body of knowledge, enrich aesthetic perception and emotional development of the personality, help citizens to identify themselves with the environment they live in, extend the options of how to spend leisure time, and contribute to the perception of the world in its entirety, i.e., including its past, present and future.

With reference to the book by Mgr. Jaromír Kouba "Introduction in Museology", Praha 1998, this text was prepared by RNDr. Jiří Žalman, Head of the Museums & Galleries Section of the Department of the Protection of Movable Cultural Heritage, Museums and Galleries, Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic.