VLTAVA Famed & Flowing

Venue: Prague Castle Riding Hall (location)

The exhibition, provisionally titled VLTAVA Famed & Flowing is being organised by the National Heritage Institute to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the first performance of Bedřich Smetana’'s symphonic poem Vltava, which premiered on 4 April 1875.

The people of Bohemia regard the Vltava River as an important national symbol. It represents the imaginary axis of the country, is the subject of legends and the scene of historical events, and connects historic settlements, castles, and chateaux. It shapes the landscape, serves as a waterway (for rafters, traders, paddlers), and is an economic and energy resource (fishing, mills, hammer forges, the Vltava cascade power plants). It is a popular site for paddlers, hikers (St. John’s Rapids), and water sports enthusiasts (Devil’s Streams, the slalom channel in Prague’s Troja).

The exhibition reflects the Vltava River as a unique national symbol and a cultural and natural phenomenon within a broad social, economic, cultural and historical context. Through a variety of exhibits – from archaeological finds from the Vltava's riverbed, technical inventions, and photographic documentation of vanished life on the river, to artworks inspired by the Vltava and significant places or events associated with it – the exhibition seeks to visualise and bring to life the "“flood of ideas, images, and impressions” evoked by the Vltava River.

The National Gallery Prague will lend iconic artworks personifying the Vltava River, such as the original sculpture Vltava, popularly called “Terezka”, by Václav Prachner, which until 1955 was part of a fountain in a niche in the enclosure wall of the garden at the Clam-Gallas Palace in Prague’'s Old Town. Also included is the relief Prague and the Vltava by Stanislav Sucharda, created as part of the interior of a residential hall that, in 1904, represented the School of Decorative Arts in Prague at the St. Louis World’'s Fair. Additionally, the exhibition will feature paintings by leading Czech landscape artists, such as Josef Mánes, Bedřich Havránek, Julius Mařák, and Antonín Slavíček, as well as work by Egon Schiele and Oskar Kokoschka, important representatives of European modern art whose lives converged with the Vltava in Český Krumlov and Prague.

More about the project VLTAVA Famed & Flowing here.

Organiser: National Heritage Institute and Prague Castle Administration

In cooperation with: National Gallery Prague, National Museum, National Technical Museum, Museum of Decorative Arts, and Czech Philharmonic