On Saturday, April 1st, the museum of the famous Czech artist and sculptor David Cerny opened in Prague. It is called Musoleum and is located in a renovated building of a former distillery in the Smichov district (Lihovar Smíchov).
“The building is listed as an architectural monument, so it was impossible to demolish it and build an ordinary house here. Therefore, we decided to preserve and turn it into a cultural space. Somehow over time, this idea turned into the David Cerny Museum. Still, then I realized that it’s not a museum, but rather a Musoleum,” explained the artist, the origin of the ironic name combining the words “museum” and “mausoleum”.
The museum occupies five floors and has an area of 1200 square meters. It introduces visitors to a cross-section of Cerny’s entire creative career – finished sculptures, sketches, unfinished projects, and other exhibits. In addition to exhibition halls, the space offers guests a bar and two open terraces with an unusual view of Prague.
“The museum idea partly arose because a few years ago, the National Gallery offered me to make an exhibition for them. But the agreement with this institution was so frighteningly inflexible and postponed twice that I eventually decided that I no longer wanted anything to do with a state institution. This became the driving force,” added the artist.