The West-Bohemian Gallery in Pilsen
Authority: The Pilsen Region
Director: Mgr. Roman Musil
History:
The West-Bohemian Gallery was founded in 1954 when it separated from the former regional natural science institution. It was originally situated in the building of the Regional Museum in Pilsen. Since 1972 its headquarters are at the reconstructed historical Masné krámy (meat market). In 1975 the Gallery’s management moved to Pražská street 16 and later obtained yet another building on the same street (no.13), which houses the management and the exhibition rooms “13”.
Collection:
The Gallery collections are focused on Czech art from the Middle Ages (Gothic) until today. The collections are arranged in the following manner: an extensive collection of old masters (Gothic, Renaissance, Baroque); a large collection of 19th-century Czech art with works by all the important artists of the last century, especially by members of the so-called generation of the National Theatre; art at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries; art from the first half of the 20th century with an emphasis on Cubism, social art, Surrealism etc.; and art after 1945.
Statement:
Products which are considered “works of art” have been singled out as culturally significant objects by those who, at any given time and social stratum, wield the power to confer the predicate “work of art” onto them; they cannot elevate themselves from the host of man-made objects simply on the basis of some inherent qualities.
Today, museums and comparable art institutions, like e.g. the ICA in London, belong to that group of agents in a society who have a sizable, although not an exclusive, share in this cultural power on the level of so-called “high art.”
Irrespective of the “avant-garde” or “conservative,” “rightist” or “leftist” stance a museum might take, it is, among other things, a carrier of socio-political connotations. By the very structure of its existence, it is a political institution. This is as true for museums in Moscow or Peking as for a museum in Plzen or the Guggenheim Museum. The question of private or public funding of the institution does not affect this axiom. The policies of publicly financed institutions are obviously subject to the approval of the supervising governmental agency. In turn, privately funded institutions naturally reflect the predilections and interests of their supporters. Any public museum receiving private donations may find itself in a conflict of interests. On the other hand, the indirect subsidy of many private institutions, through exemptions from taxes and partial funding of their programs, could equally create problems. Often, however, there exists in fact, if not by design, a tolerance or even a congruence of the respective ideological persuasions.
In principle, the decisions of museum officials, ideologically highly determined or receptive to deviations from the norm, follow the boundaries set by their employers. These boundaries need not be expressly stated in order to be operative. Frequently, museum officials have internalized the thinking of their superiors to such a degree that it becomes natural for them to make the “right” decision, and a congenial atmosphere reigns between employee and employer.
Nevertheless, it would be simplistic to assume that in each case museum officials are faithfully translating the interests of their superiors into museum policy, particularly since new cultural manifestations are not always recognizable as to their suitability or opposition to the parties concerned.
The potential for confusion is increased by the fact that the convictions of an “artist” are not necessarily reflected in the objective position his/her work takes on the socio-political scale and that this position could change over the years to the point of reversal.
Still, in order to gain some insight into the forces that elevate certain products to the level of “works of art” it is helpful – among other investigations – to look into the economic and political underpinnings of the institutions, individuals, and groups who share in the control of cultural power.
Strategies might be developed for performing this task in ways that its manifestations are liable to be considered “works of art” in their own right. Not surprisingly, some museums do not think they have sufficient independence to exhibit such a portrait of their own structure and try to dissuade or even censor works of this nature, as has been demonstrated. Fortunately art institutions and other cultural power agents do not form a monolithic block; so the public’s access to such works might be limited but not totally prevented.
Bertold Brecht’s 1934 appraisal of the “Five Difficulties in Writing the Truth” is still valid today. They are the need for “the courage to write the truth, although it is being suppressed; the intelligence to recognize it, although it is being covered up; the judgment to choose those in whose hands it becomes effective; the cunning to spread it among them.”
There are no “artists”, however, who are immune to being affected and influenced by the socio-political value-system of the society in which they live and of which all cultural agencies are a part, no matter if they are ignorant of these constraints or not (“artists” like “works of art” are put in quotation marks because they are predicates with evaluative connotations deriving their currency from the relative ideological frame of a given cultural power group). So-called “avant-garde art” is, at best, working close to the limitations set by its cultural/political environment, but it always operates within that allowance.
“Artists,” as much as their supporters and their enemies, no matter of what ideological coloration, are unwitting partners in the art syndrome, and relate to each other dialectically. They participate jointly in the maintenance and/or development of the ideological make-up of their society. They work within that frame, set the frame, and are being framed.