🇨🇿 Tento článek si můžete přečíst i v češtině: Alicja Knast a její říše divů
At the start of 2021, when the lazy Czech pond of museums was still brimming with controversies surrounding previous directors, an exotic pike swam in: a blue-eyed Polish woman with experience in the Anglo-Saxon world, a musicologist with a weakness for neuroscience, and a manager who had repeatedly triumphed in several museums across Poland. She won the competition (whose applications were evaluated by experts at the Albertina in Vienna, the Pompidou Centre in Paris and New York’s MoMA), and so this fragile-looking (but iron-willed) woman came to the forefront of the prestigious Czech national institution. The Czech art world, used to having one of their friends (or at least a familiar face) occupying this position, gulped in astonishment.
The exhibition of baroque painter and bohemian Petr Brandl is just one example of where the National Gallery is moving towards under Alicja Knast’s leadership. Two years in the making, by one the gallery’s court curators, it featured original and exceptionally elegantly placed paintings ‘floating’ in space, with clear and accessible descriptions (placed on the ground, so visitors didn’t have to jostle around them). It showcased the deeply-researched theme of baroque art on two levels, not only in an illuminating and intellectually-enriching way, but also a fundamentally adventurous way. This is what the best exhibitions at the most financially endowed artistic institutions in New York or London look like. (Although nowadays it is rare for visitors not to be overwhelmed by anti-imperialist self-flagellation.)
Another example is the recent exhibition at the Waldstein Riding School, ‘École de Paris: Artists from Bohemia and Interwar Paris.’
You leave the gallery feeling improved, enriched, more educated; at the same time, it wasn’t painful, but you actually enjoyed it and want more! You can’t resist the epic catalogue so that you can take this moving experience home with you. With a reduced number of exhibitions (the state-owned organisation’s budget is ruthless, and inflation devaluates the unchanging bundle every month), Knast leads the National Gallery with emphasis on exceptional quality. Not everyone in Prague has noticed yet, but Alicja moves among the most interesting players in the prestigious international field of museums.
“I always say that the perfect exhibition is like the model Kate Moss: a girl who looks like she just woke up like that,” the exclusive manager laughs. “But in reality, there’s big money behind that kind of installation, invested in lighting and equipment. Giving it minimalist simplicity isn’t in the least bit easy. The majority of galleries in London were specifically built for the purpose of exhibiting, and museum management has been part of their culture for much longer. Vast sums of money are invested in their facilities; I think their museum ergonomics are ideal. In the Czech Republic, we only have one exhibition hall which has the right dimensions, height and necessary volume of air, the Waldstein Riding School. And it’s not even an exhibition hall!”
But Alicja does not dream of ideal buildings: “I like the space at the Rudolfinum in Prague, it has the right height for a gallery. But on the other hand, one of humankind’s most important sculptors, Dani Karavan, said that he likes obstacles and constraints; he likes to wrestle with things that hold him back. It’s a greater challenge. So what if we don’t have the most suitable spaces, it doesn’t matter; even that encourages creativity. The visitor isn’t interested in the fact that we struggle to work here. Many people complain about the Trade Fair Palace, but if you look at the contemporary art exhibition, you will see that hard work within a tricky space paid off, and the result looks good. If you have time and money, you can make something out of any space.”
Behind the Scenes of Crafts & Landmarks
We are speaking in a gallery room at Kinsky Palace, currently closed due to renovation. The general director has two colleagues at hand; they do not intervene during the interview, but something about this charming woman’s behaviour suggests that she is no stranger to brutal attacks during her working day. She describes her work as a process of reconciling strategies, moderating extensive external relations, the budget, negotiating with the state…her favourite part is collaborating with regional galleries. But the strongest impression is that of someone who has loved museums since childhood, of someone who, when she was offered a place at university, her family (where no one had studied before) would lament, “how will you support yourself!” As a schoolgirl in Poznan, she would volunteer at a museum, gratefully breathing in the secrets of preserving precious landmarks in its workshop.
“I consider museums to be exceptional instruments in the form of indirect studying. You learn without realising it at exhibitions, but it’s not in the context of school, which I personally don’t like as a system, because they often force you into things that don’t bring you any benefit.” What did she find the hardest when she first started working in Prague? “The visual world is set in every country, and a director has to respect this. It’s different in Poland, in the Czech Republic, in Britain, completely different in the United States, and even varies between New York and Los Angeles.”
She had to get used to the fact that local visual culture prefers cursive text that is centred for descriptions, which is an unusual practice outside the Czech Republic, because it strains the eyes and is harder to read. But since it is a part of local visual literacy, it needs to be respected.
She gives another example: “here, cultural events are advertised on A0 sized posters. The same sized poster is used for an exhibition in an 150m small gallery, as for an exhibition at the Waldstein Riding School, which is 800m2. We are in a baroque environment, so the poster has to communicate accordingly. If you go to Denmark, all the posters are A3 sized. This is the difference between Protestant Denmark and baroque Prague, the visual inheritance we are working with. Both artists and the public grow up with it. At the beginning, I wanted to demonstrate at the National Gallery that a better way of museum ergonomics (such as text positioning, fonts) exists, but it would definitely be to the detriment of the long-standing tradition here, which is completely different. So the goal is ultimately not just to copy other countries, but to understand why this tradition is here.”
While curators in Prague work in beautiful buildings, it is difficult to adapt the spaces for exhibiting (with the exception of the Rudolfinum, they were all built for other purposes.) 75,000 visitors came to see the Brandl exhibition; the space at the Waldstein Riding School is breath-taking. The baroque ceiling alone is enchanting, but at the same time, there aren’t enough toilets. The exhibition’s popularity illustrated the acute lack of facilities in the National Gallery’s Prague premises.
Have you ever come across a general director who, when describing a phenomenal success (in an interview!), would bring to your attention the fact that they signed off on too few English catalogues? “We have a small budget, I miscalculated the huge interest of visitors from abroad,” the director criticises herself, while the PR consultant almost faints. But this is her style: she is bold, direct, doesn’t use any tactics or schemes, nor hide. She works hard and listens very carefully; she is also ‘unmanagerially’ human. I am beginning to understand the almost mythical standing she enjoys in Poland.
Knast had to overcome Covid, in addition to escalating electricity bills in the wake of the war in Ukraine. Alicja firmly believes in the necessity of the independence of the institution she leads (in Poland, she got into disputes with politicians when they tried to use a cultural institution for their own gain).
Now she lives for the Czech gallery. “We have a centralised collection, because after the Second World War, the National Gallery was celebrated as a central art collection. So we have objects from the middle ages to the modern day. It is varied and interesting, in the sense that the National Gallery can organise exhibitions across a whole spectrum of history, which is specific to this institution. We can do things from a global perspective on the history of art, because we have an Asian collection, and we can even map the creative output of excellent female artists, which we are doing at the moment. The possibilities are endless.”
The building we are currently sitting in once had the highest number of visitors. An exhibition on impressionism, a collection from Denmark, attracted 100,000 visitors to Kinsky Palace. “We need to get Kinsky Palace to the point where we can organise exhibitions which have a touristic overlap, which appeal to both Czech and foreign visitors. We are planning to show Czech surrealism here,” Knast says eagerly.
We didn’t talk about which language we will converse in. Did I want to catch her out? (Yes.) But her Czech is very good. I knew I would meet an excellent professional, but I had no idea that I would also be in the presence of such a rare person. Shouldn’t we have spoken in English instead, or should I have let her answer in Polish?
This admirable woman’s passion is evident, although I can’t make out the occasional non-Czech word. But she must feel freer in the languages she studied. Alicja continues, “we are doing our best to change and fill in what we know about art through exhibitions, for example, the quality of a whole range of unknown female painters is truly top-tier. The mental shift each exhibition brings about is a bridge which helps understand a different phenomenon, and enriches with new connections. Anxiety, uncertainty, conflict; all these have come before. A good museum helps us realise we are not alone, and that our predecessors also went through injustice or war.”
She considers her ability to secure greater calm and security at work, managing chaos, to be behind her success: “of course we have problems with finances, but people have to at least enjoy the work, enjoy going to work. And you have to feel that what you are doing has greater implications. It is something bigger than the self. At the moment, many installations are being taken over by artificial intelligence.”
To which Alicja Knast responds, “in the end, everyone will realise they long for the analogue. Impressive experiences and projections can be interesting, but they can never replace the original. Everyone wants to visit a gallery and see the original things. Nothing terrible happened when Gutenberg started to print in mass, nor was anything fundamentally changed by the electronic book. I’m not worried,” she smiles.
This article appeared in the eight issue of the print magazine N&N – Noble Notes
