Prague to get new museum dedicated to Alphonse Mucha

The legacy of the prolific Czech Artwork Nouveau artist Alphonse Mucha will quickly be given an elevated standing in central Prague with the opening of a brand new devoted museum. The establishment, a collaboration between the Mucha Basis and the Prague-based actual property builders Crestyl, will occupy over 1,100 sq. m within the renovated Savarin Palace, near the town’s historic Previous City Sq..

The museum, which is anticipated to open on 24 January 2025, is a central a part of Crestyl’s wider Savarin Advanced growth, a significant city undertaking being overseen by the British architect Thomas Heatherwick that features the restoration of present buildings and the creation of recent open public areas. 

The brand new establishment may have a floorplan virtually double the scale of Prague’s pre-existing “Mucha Museum”, situated on close by Pánská road. Whereas that museum was beforehand affiliated with the Mucha Basis, Marcus Mucha, great-grandson of Alphonse Mucha and the manager director of the muse, says the settlement with the house’s operator has been “terminated” as of Could this yr.

Since then, Mucha claims, “it [the operator] now not has any proper to function as such or use any of the mental property associated to the Mucha Household Assortment. The exhibition house on Panska Road is now not affiliated with nor endorsed by the Mucha Basis and its operations are unauthorised and in breach of its contractual obligations.”

Whereas the model of the museum on Pánská road types itself as “the one museum on the planet devoted to the life and work” of Alphonse Mucha, the brand new museum’s web site says it’s “the one official museum devoted to the Czech artist.”

The Mucha Basis was based following the loss of life of Alphonse Mucha’s son Jiri, in 1992, by Jiri’s spouse, Geraldine Mucha, and their solely son, John Mucha. On the identical time, Geraldine established the Mucha Belief to handle Mucha’s creative property. Marcus says that works belonging to the Mucha Belief have been faraway from the Pánská road web site and “are actually being rested.”

Representatives for the Pánská road web site haven’t responded to The Artwork Newspaper‘s request for remark.

Working throughout portray, illustration and graphic design, Alphonse Mucha is finest recognized internationally for his extremely stylised theatrical posters and ads, together with these he made in collaboration with the main French actor Sarah Bernhardt. He rose to fame in Paris, then returned to his homeland within the latter a part of his life. There, he created works similar to his late masterpiece The Slav Epic (1912-28), a collection of 20 large-scale work depicting the myths and historical past of the Slavic individuals, and a stained glass window that may nonetheless be seen in Prague’s Saint Vitus Cathedral.

Based on Marcus, the Savarin undertaking will now place his great-grandfather’s “artwork and legacy firmly the place it belongs, in a bespoke, superbly designed house within the coronary heart of historic Prague.”

New tales to be instructed

The museum’s opening show, put collectively by the Mucha Basis’s curator, Tomoko Sato, “will current beforehand unexhibited works, together with early oil work, hand-drawn research for ornamental paperwork, gadgets exploring Mucha’s fascination with Freemasonry, and research supplies for The Slav Epic,” a museum assertion says. It advantages “from the analysis and scholarship round Mucha performed over latest years”, Marcus provides.

The exhibition galleries, designed by the Czech architect Eva Jiřičná and her AI Design studio, will occupy the 18th century constructing’s “most traditionally worthwhile and best-preserved rooms”, Marcus continues.

The group behind the brand new museum hope that the Savarin growth will even see the Slav Epic, at present situated in Moravský Krumlov Citadel, near the town of Brno in South Moravia, dropped at Prague. Mucha gifted the collection to the capital, however it has since been topic to disputes over its possession and show.

Marcus Mucha says “an settlement approving a brand new dwelling” for the Slav Epic is now in place between the Metropolis of Prague, the Mucha Basis and Crestyl, however that “a variety of negotiations are ongoing”. Whereas a 2026 opening has beforehand been focused, Mucha notes timelines have “shifted submit pandemic and the completion date is anticipated to be inside three years of the beginning of development, with the precise timing depending on the problem of all needed permits.”

He provides that whereas the galleries exhibiting the Slav Epic, set to be designed by Heatherwick, would function as a “distinct undertaking” from the museum, he sees the latter as offering a “journey by means of the lifetime of Alphonse Mucha and the way this pilgrimage led to the creation of The Slav Epic.”