Muzeum Part 2

Now that the National Museum comprises of two buildings I thought it would be better to devote a second post and day to the new section which is housed in the former Federal Assembly. I also relished the chance to explore this building, which sits grim and remote at the top of Wenceslas Square.

When I first arrived in the Czech Republic the building was surrounded by concrete barriers and guarded by police because it was the headquarter of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. Now, the headquarters have moved and the building has been acquired by the National Museum. There is a perverse symmetry because during the 1968 invasion, the Warsaw Pact troops allegedly thought the older National Museum was a radio station and fired on it. The bullet marks are still visible in the columns. Fittingly, the current exhibition, Za Svobodu, is on the struggle against the communist regime.

The exhibition is a survey of both repression and resistance from 1948 to 1989. The exhibition attempts to show life at different levels with examples of propaganda, dissident literature and even a replica of a typical living room in a panelák flat. This is one of those situations where I could reel off all the information I've gleaned form books, articles and conversations, yet it doesn't change the fact that I don't feel this exhibition as Czech people do. For me, these things are examples. For them, they are memories.

However, the disconnection perhaps invites other 'readings' about the place. The main one is how unreal some of this feels. I'm referring especially to the riot cop gear, which appears more like a the accessory to some ill-conceived live-sized action figure still in its blister pack of a display case. Compounding this feeling is the replica of the Berlin Wall toward the end of this exhibition, complete with a copy of the original graffiti. I wonder how many other examples of graffiti have been copied as though they were the work of an old master? Actually, given that it's been a few decades since Basquiat decorated New York with his work, there have probably been a few. There's probably also a forged Banksy around - probably done by Banksy himself.

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the exhibition were the connections made with the the charter movement in the Baltic states and those here. I was surprised to read that one Latvian student Eliyahu Rips, attempted to set himself alight in protest against the invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. This was only one example of other forms of protest to come from this region. It's a history I've heard little about since living here. Again, a visit to a museum resulted in me learning something.