"Saved heritage"

Like many other areas of Prague, the area surrounding the gallery of the Troja Castle was affected by last years floods; especially the contemporary collection of sculptures. The exhibit "Saved Heritage" can be viewed in the Dům U Kamenneho Zvonu until September 7, 2003. A special thanks goes to all the people that took part in the needed repairs of the area - repairs to the gardens, repairs to the castle, as well as repairs to the works of art. This year is also the 40th anniversary of the origin of the gallery. Through the diligent work of the employees, experts and volunteers, most of the collections were restored or at least conserved. Thanks to the restoration and conservation many of those pieces of art can be displayed.

The exhibit displays known as well as less known works of art, from the end of the 19th century until contemporary times, judged by criteria of the greatest endangering of damage by the floods. There was great care given to conserving the greatest number of works of art. Similarly, there was great consideration given to repairing the works of art with the utmost care and use of advanced technology. The Prague Gallery, established in 1963, was entrusted to provide the best conditions for the works of art collected from today’s Town Council of Prague, including a public collection of sculptures. Included in this collection were great amounts of works of art from the late Frantisek Bilek and Jaroslav Horejec (some of their art is even on display). Also, there is a great spectrum of plaster models that were used for the studies of their sculptures, for example, that of J. V. Myslbek, J. Maratek, J. Stursy, or even V. Amort’s bronze statue of the Waterman. Contemporary generation works of art are represented by M. Bilek, K. Gebauer, M. Jetelova, S. Milkov, V. Preclik, J. Sozansky, J. Zeithamml, and others, which restored their works of art themselves or partly took part in their restoration.

Art pieces of plaster, ceramic, stone, wood, metal and other materials, including paper, glass, plastic and even dirt, were damaged the most by the floods. The parts left were put together according to documentation or models and the missing parts were then constructed.The preparation for the exhibit took a little less than a year after the floods, and is seen as little less than a miracle, since "drowned" and almost dead collection of works of art were "brought to life again".

In addition to the exhibit there will be regular fun Tuesdays accompanying the exhibit of the works of art.