Quarks and Cracklings: The Olomouc Art Scene and Related Spheres, 1990–2020+

Vladimír Havlík’s exhibition "White Christmas" at the Gallery in the Arcade in Olomouc – an event with students from the Department of Fine Arts at the Faculty of Education, Palacký University in Olomouc, 1991. Photo: Milena Valušková

I. MEMORY IS NOT AN ARCHIVE

The exhibition Memory Is Not an Archive launches the research and exhibition project Kvarky a škvarky: The Olomouc Art Scene and Related Spheres 1990–2020+. The project traces the transformations of the Olomouc art scene since 1989. It includes a specialist publication on the Olomouc art scene, which is being published to coincide with the exhibition. In spring 2027, this will be followed by the project’s main exhibition, which will be on display from the end of April across several exhibition spaces at the Olomouc Museum of Art. As well as focusing on key figures and works, it also highlights the activities of independent initiatives and galleries that have helped shape the city’s cultural life over the past thirty years. The project was supported under the NAKI III Olomouc in 3D grant programme and is being carried out in collaboration with Palacký University in Olomouc.

Memory Is Not an Archive focuses on the transformations of the Olomouc gallery scene between 1990 and 2020 and highlights a selection of institutions, independent initiatives, exhibition spaces and projects that influenced cultural life in the city during this period. It is not merely about what was exhibited, but also about the people, places and conditions that made it possible to present contemporary art in Olomouc. The exhibition therefore explores the programmes of individual galleries, their organisational structures, and the curators, gallery owners and artists who shaped them.

The exhibition is structured around ten stops, each of which showcases selected galleries, exhibition spaces and initiatives in Olomouc: the Olomouc Museum of Art, the Galerie pod podloubím, the Divadlo hudby, the Galerie Caesar, the Galerie Půda, the Galerie 36, the Vitrína Deniska, the Galerie W7, the Galerie XY and the Telegraph Gallery. Although this represents only a tiny fraction of the more than one hundred exhibition venues which, over the course of three decades, have left their mark – to a greater or lesser extent – on the city’s cultural memory, the individual stops demonstrate the diversity of the environment in which contemporary art has been presented in Olomouc. Alongside state-funded organisations, the city was home to association-run and private galleries, independent initiatives, artist-run spaces, site-specific galleries, as well as commercial and semi-commercial entities.

The exhibition goes beyond mere data, information and photographic documentation. It also presents original or updated installations that have been exhibited in selected venues. It thus offers a partial insight into the transformations in Czech art from the early post-revolutionary years right up to the recent past. The selection includes reconstructions of happenings, original and restored works or their exact copies, documentation of defunct installations, and updated versions of works whose significance has changed over the years. The result is not an attempt to capture a unified collective memory or to create a complete archive of the local art scene. It is one possible reconstruction, created at a specific point in time and based on the sources available to the curators. Memory, after all, is not an archive – and neither is the past itself. The exhibition is an attempt to get as close as possible to the past, whilst remaining aware that between a preserved document, a personal memory and a contemporary interpretation, only a partial picture can ever emerge.

The project “Kvarky a škvarky.” The Olomouc Art Scene and Related Spheres, 1990–2020+ was created as part of the Program to Support Applied Research in the Field of National and Cultural Identity for the years 2023 through 2030 (NAKI III) of the Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic as part of the project “Olomouc in 3D—A New Dimension of the City’s Cultural Heritage: Past, Present, Future” (DH23P03OVV018).

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)