Free National Gallery. Description of a Struggle. 3. 2. 2026 – 29. 3. 2026
Curatorial team: Alexandra Kusá, Branislav Matis, Nina Vidovencová in collaboration with Slobodná úderka (free shock brigade); curatorial collaboration for GHMP: Helena Musilová
After the 2023 elections, the new Slovak government appointed a nominee from the Slovak National Party to head the Ministry of Culture and the controlled destruction of cultural institutions began. The new cultural policy was not ideological, but rather personnel-based and focused on undermining expertise.
What followed was beyond what we could have imagined: bans, cancellations of exhibitions and projects, unfavourable contracts and, above all, total amateurism. The gallery’s employees rose up in creative, civic and professional resistance, which culminated in their mass resignation. More than a hundred employees voluntarily left the jobs they loved because they could not do their work properly under the appointed directors – four of whom came and went during one year.
From the summer of 2024 until the mass departure in April 2025, we experienced a most remarkable period, when various forms of creative resistance and opposition were devised in the struggle against amateurism. It is precisely the reflection on these events and their ever-growing repercussions that forms the theme and content of the contextual, museological exhibition at Prague City Gallery (GHMP). The installation will be divided into two parts: on one floor we will reflect on key events through documents, videos, commentaries and photographs; on the second floor, we will present creative forms of resistance.
The events at the Slovak National Gallery ( SNG) sparked a wave of solidarity and became part of the protests of the Open Culture! and Art Will Not Be Silent! initiatives. The exhibition will also include works of art that were part of this project, small pop-up box exhibitions by artists such as Roman Ondak, Ilona Németh, Jiří Franta and David Böhm, Matúš Maťátko and others.
The project is neither an activist nor a documentary exhibition, although it uses both approaches. A new genre is emerging – a living artistic environment as a “description of a struggle”, which contributes to the context of the political history of art and the expansion of the field of art history and exhibition. The exhibition reflects the principles to which GHMP has long been committed. Through artistic projects and visual interventions, the gallery wishes to enable the articulation of clear positions on current social and political issues, encourage critical thinking among visitors and show that art can be a means of reflection, dialogue and active engagement in public affairs.