Overview of exhibitions of the Olomouc Museum of Art for 2025

Milan Dobeš, Movement IV, 1985, serigraphy in colour, paper, 60 x 60 cm. Olomouc Museum of Art
Milan Dobeš, Movement IV, 1985. Olomouc Museum of Art
The list of exhibitions of the Olomouc Museum of Art is not definitive. The curators are preparing smaller exhibitions in other spaces - in the foyer of CENTRAL or in the Amadeus Coffee and Wine café.

Jiří Suchánek: Perplex

  • 18. 1. – 9. 2. 2025
  • Olomouc Museum of Modern Art, Gallery

The kinetic robotic installation Perplex works with the principles of reflections, concentrations, reflections and reflections of sound and light. Three rotating parabolic mirrors survey the space through flashes of light and sound programmed in an unpredictable arrangement. The installation explores the possibilities of mechanical waves and tests how spatial situations can be thickened and complicated with a limited number of sources and with the help of continuous movement. In the installation, Jiří Suchánek refers to the origins of the use of acoustics in the military industry. Parabolic acoustic mirrors were used in the UK to detect enemy fighters, and the parabola shape was gradually transformed into modern radar. Suchanek experiments with the possibilities of reflections on a parabolic mirror, but instead of passive reception, he works with their deliberate and controlled transmission, creating a new spatial quality.

Josef Suchánek, výstava Perplex, vernisáž. Foto: pro ČRo Vltava Jakub Wittka
Josef Suchánek, Perplex. Photo: for ČRo Vltava Jakub Wittka

Metamorphosis

  • 30. 1. – 6. 4. 2025
  • Olomouc Archdiocesan Museum, Gallery

The exhibition project refers to the famous work of the ancient poet Publius Ovid Naso (43 BC-17/18 AD) entitled The Metamorphoses, more precisely to his eighth book of stories from Greek mythology. The common denominator of the extensive poetic work was physical or spiritual transformations. The works of art on display take visitors through four interconnected stories (Labyrinth, Theseus’ battle with Minotaur, Ariadne, Daedalus and Icarus) that remain present in some form in the cultural consciousness of modern man. Interested visitors will be able to experience special educational exhibits that will introduce them to the material of the selected works of art. They will be able to verify with their own senses that such material is subject to constant changes due to the influence of the environment and time.

Rupert Kytka (1910─1993), bez názvu (klubko drátů), nedatováno, černobílá fotografie, papír s emulzí,17 x 23 cm. Muzeum umění Olomouc
Rupert Kytka, untitled (ball of wires). MUO

V. Book Art Triennial Martin

  • 27. 2. – 25. 5. 2025
  • Museum of Modern Art, Salon + Cabinet

The author’s book as an important art form will be presented by the Museum of Art in an exhibition that premiered at the end of 2024 in Martin, Slovakia, at the 5th Triennial of the Art of the Book, co-organised by institutions from Olomouc, Wrocław, Bratislava and Budapest. Visitors will see works by artists from the Central European region that bring a new perspective on the book as a medium and push the boundaries of visual art.

Since 2010, the Olomouc Museum of Art together with the Turčianska Gallery in Martina has been involved in the regular international presentation of authors’ books. It presents the author’s book as a work of art – a unique combination and harmony of artistic, craft or technical disciplines with a personal creative language and a specific vision.

Zbigniew Sałaj, Drewutnia, 2010–2024, z majetku autora. Foto: Zdeno Ziman
Zbigniew Salaj, The Woodshed. From the author’s estate. Photo: Zdeno Ziman

Steklik’s Harakiri (exhibition about exhibitions)

  • 27. 2. – 25.  5. 2025
  • Museum of Modern Art, Gallery

Jan Steklík (1938-2017) is a keen draughtsman, initiator of actions in nature, creator and recorder of subtle situations in the art world and in the “real” one. The exhibition will present his work presented at seventeen exhibitions in Opava, together with representative documentation of these exhibitions and performances that took place from the early 1980s until recently. The Museum of Art will also present for the first time a series of drawings it purchased in 2022, as well as several objects and sculptures on loan from private and public collections.

Annegret Heinl a Jan Steklík opouštějí Dům umění pomocí Ariadnina provazu. Za doprovodu houslisty Jiřího Macháčka. Dům umění, Opava, 27. 10. – 27. 11. 2005
Annegret Heinl and Jan Steklík leave the House of Art using Ariadne’s rope.

Milan Dobeš. A celebration of colour, light and movement

Pioneer of kinetic and constructivist art in Czechoslovakia

  • 20. 3. – 7. 9. 2025
  • Museum of Modern Art, Navy

The Museum of Art offers a cross-sectional exhibition of Milan Dobeš (1929), a Slovak painter, graphic artist, creator of installations and objects. The Přerov-born Milan Dobeš, who lived most of his ninety-five years in Slovakia, began with impressionist landscape paintings and urban exteriors of Bratislava created during his studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Bratislava (1951-1956) and continued with the cubist paintings of his blue period. Other works on display – geometric drawings and prints in which the basic element is a circle and its segments – are joined by objects and installations in which he begins to work with light and gradually takes on a kinetic and constructivist character.

Milan Dobeš, Velká rotace 1, 1992
Milan Dobeš, Big rotation 1

Christ’s journey to Golgotha through the streets of Jerusalem

Restored prints from the collection of the Olomouc Museum of Art

  • 10. 4. – 6. 7. 2025
  • Olomouc Archdiocesan Museum, Chapel of St. John the Baptist

The collection of old prints of the Olomouc Museum of Art has only recently been enriched by an exceptional Baroque print by the Augsburg draughtsman, engraver and publisher Johann Daniel Herz the Elder (1693-1754) – View of Jerusalem with the Passion of Christ – from around 1735. It is the largest known print ever made in its time, printed from a single copperplate on a single sheet of handmade paper (81.9 x 121 cm). The work has undergone extensive restoration and will now be presented to the public for the first time.

The bird’s-eye view of ancient Jerusalem contains an enormous amount of detail, biblical buildings and places, crowded with people, among whom one can discern all the important episodes of Christ’s Passover story, taking place simultaneously at the same moment.

Johann Daniel Herz st. (1693 Augsburg – 1754 Augsburg), Pohled na Jeruzalém s vyobrazením Kristových pašijí, kolem 1735, lept s mědirytem, 819 x 1210 mm, Muzeum umění Olomouc
Johann Daniel Herz st., View of Jerusalem with a depiction of the Passion of Christ. MUO

City on three hills

Medieval Olomouc through the eyes of archaeology

  • 7. 5. – 31. 8. 2025
  • Olomouc Archdiocesan Museum, Gallery

The material culture of medieval Olomouc from the 7th to the 15th century is the subject of an exhibition at the Archdiocesan Museum Olomouc. For the first time in history, visitors will be able to see together all the most important archaeological discoveries made in Olomouc from the 19th century to the present day. The exhibition will reveal the origins and development of the settlement of Olomouc Hill in the Middle Ages. It will explain the historical significance of the three local hills – Svatopetrský, Svatováclavský and Svatomichalský, where the seat of the Olomouc princes and two stone castles stood. It also deals with the beginnings of the Olomouc bishopric, defunct church buildings, etc.

Řádkový komorový kachel s reliéfem bájné obludy s korunovanou lidskou hlavou, Olomouc (?), 1. čtvrtina 15. století, Vlastivědné muzeum Olomouc.
A linear chambered cachel with a relief of a mythical monster with a crowned human head. Museum of Homeland History Olomouc.

Mánes again in Moravia

  • 22. 5. – 31. 8. 2025
  • Kroměříž Archdiocesan Museum, Gallery

The exhibition organized by the National Gallery Prague in the Archbishop’s Chateau in Kroměříž is dedicated to the works of painter, graphic artist and designer Josef Mánes. The works, which come mainly from the collections of the National Gallery, are arranged under the headings associated with his Moravian sojourn. There are also studies of costumes, nature and depictions of life at the manor house. The Museum of Art provides technical support for the exhibition.

Výstavu Mánes opět na Moravě mohou vidět návštěvníci kroměřížského Arcibiskupském zámku. Národní galerie Praha
Exhibition: Mánes again in Moravia. National Gallery Prague

Small architecture

Furniture and interior design of Dřevopodnik Holešov

  • 19. 6. – 12. 10. 2025
  • Museum of Modern Art, Salon + Cabinet

Dřevopodnik Holešov was the only one systematically engaged in the production of furniture and interior accessories made of wood laminate – bent wooden slats – from the late 1950s to the 1990s. The architect Ludvík Volák, the main personality of the company, followed Scandinavian inspiration and his work achieved high functional and aesthetic qualities. This unprecedented revelation on the Czechoslovak market was noticed by architects who invited Dřevopodnik to collaborate on lucrative state contracts. This resulted in unique interiors of Czechoslovak embassies, EXPO pavilions, hotels, CSA offices and cultural and restaurant facilities, which in symbiosis with numerous works of art represent the best of Czechoslovak art culture. Custom-made cooperation with leading Czechoslovak artists and small-lot production made the furniture valuable, but often unavailable pieces.

Dřevopodnik Holešov na veletrhu spotřebního zboží v Brně, 1986
Dřevopodnik Holešov at the fair in Brno. MUO archive

„Dviženije“

  • 19. 6. – 12. 10. 2025
  • Museum of Modern Art, Gallery

In the 1960s and 1970s, the neo-avant-garde futurological group Dviženije (“movement”) inventively developed kineticism, cybernetics, cosmic utopias and performance art in numerous projects. The collective work of the group around Lev Nusberg, with its interest in the Anthropocene, the human body, the future of life on the planet, and the game with the political establishment, still has an inspiring and provocative aesthetic and cultural-political impact. The Museum of Art, under the direction of Professor Tomáš Glance of the University of Zurich, will present a unique corpus of works and documentation from the archives of art historians Jindřich Chalupecký, Jiří Padrta and photographer Jan Sagl, supplemented by additional loans.


Architectural graphics from the collections of the Archbishop’s Castle in Kroměříž

  • 16. 10. 2025 – leden 2026
  • Olomouc Archdiocesan Museum, Gallery

Representation of Architecture in Graphic Art from the 16th to the 19th Century will be presented in an exhibition from the collection of the Archbishopric of Olomouc, housed at the Chateau in Kroměříž. The main advantage of printmaking is the possibility of replicating the image, and therefore it becomes an effective tool for disseminating and communicating architectural canons and forms. Very soon, the repertoire of architectural prints was enriched by vedutas, followed by albums dedicated to urban settlements and individual buildings, including, for example, garden architecture and interior furnishings. Among the most important exhibits are the richly illustrated albums by the Baroque architects Paul Decker and Johann Bernhard Fischer of Erlach, sets of views of ancient monuments and contemporary Baroque Italian architecture and gardens by Giovanni Battista Falda, and the work of one of the most original Italian printmakers of the 18th century, Giovanna Battista Piranesi.

Ottavio Bertotti Scamozzi, Villa Almerico Capra zv. La Rotonda ve Vicenze, 1778, mědiryt, papír, 264 x 402 mm. 2. list z alba Le fabbriche e i disegni di Andrea Palladio (Práce a kresby Andrea Palladia).
Ottavio Bertotti Scamozzi, Villa Almerico Capra called La Rotonda in Vicenza. Archbishopric of Olomouc

Lives. Artists in the pen of Karel van Mander

  • 9. 10. 2025 – 11. 1. 2026
  • Museum of Modern Art, Picture Gallery

It may sound unusual, but in a way, one of the artists of the time – Karel van Mander (1548-1606) – will be the co-author of the exhibition of Dutch painting of the 15th and 16th centuries at the Olomouc Museum of Art. He was one of the most renowned Dutch painters of his time and still is today. However, he is absolutely exceptional as the author of Het Schilder-boeck (The Painter’s Book), first published in 1604, in which he provided key information about the lives and works of his predecessors and contemporaries. “The exhibition and the selection of artists will develop in a similar way to the narrative of Mander’s book,” says curator Miroslav Kindl. “Through paintings, drawings, prints and books, it will present not only important works of Dutch painting from the 15th and 16th centuries, but also the principles of early modern art collecting and the intellectual world of the early monographers.”

The project also includes the first-ever Czech translation of Mander’s Het Schilder-boeck, which was and still is the basis for the scholarly work of art historians, without losing its appeal to a lay audience.

Lucas Gassel, Odpočinek Svaté rodiny na útěku do Egypta, 2. čtvrtina 16. století
Lucas Gassel, The Rest of the Holy Family on the Flight to Egypt. Archbishopric of Olomouc

“Quarks and Greaves”

Olomouc Art Scene and Related Zones 1990-2020

  • 6. 11. 2025 – 12. 4. 2026
  • Museum of Modern Art, Navy, Salon + Cabinet

The exhibition and a comprehensive accompanying publication will complete the “free trilogy”, which gradually maps the art scene in Central Moravia from 1945 to the present day. It will thus build on the earlier major project “Announcement of Icarus’ Flight.” The Olomouc Sixties in the Mirror of Art Culture from 1998 and The Greenhouse. Chapters from the History of Olomouc Art Culture 1969-1989 from 2009. In addition to free works (painting, sculpture, drawing, graphic art, sculpture, photography), due attention will also be paid to applied art (especially graphic design), architecture, art in public space, gallery and institutional operations and important festivals of multi-genre focus.

Adéla Janská, Metamorphosis, 2021, olej a akrylový sprej na plátně, 210 × 280 cm (2 díly)
Adéla Janská, Metamorphosis. Photo: author’s archive.

Translated by DeepL.com