The National Gallery in Prague presents thirteen Cate Blanchett characters in the Trade Fair Palace The National Gallery in Prague’s autumn program in the Trade Fair Palace will be dominated by a film installation by the Berlin-based artist Julian Rosefeldt: Manifesto featuring Australian actress Cate Blanchett. In thirteen characters, she will present manifestoes that heralded the origin of modern art. The now traditional Autumn Opening on October 18 launches five exhibition projects in total.

Manifesto is based on written materials by futurists, dadaists, the Fluxus movement, suprematists and other artistic groups, as well as the ideas of individual artists, architects, dancers and filmmakers.

“The thirteen-part installation has been presented in Berlin, New York, Helsinki and Buenos Aires and was very well received. In this project of the ‘manifesto of the manifestos’, Cate Blanchett personifies thirteen characters – a homeless person, a teacher, a marionette actor and a worker and gives new dramatic meanings to well- or lesser-known statements in unexpected contexts,” says Jiří Fajt, General Director of the National Gallery in Prague.

Students’ works and echoes of František Skála
Besides Manifesto, the National Gallery in Prague also opens the exhibition Biafra of the Spirit: Students of the Third World Countries in Czechoslovakia in the Trade Fair Palace on October 18. It presents works by African and Asian students who studied film in Prague in the 1960s and 1970s. The Czechoslovak new wave is shown for the first time in the context of works by major filmmakers, such as Nabil Maleh from Syria, Mohammed Lakhdar-Hamina from Algeria and Nosratollah Karimi from Iran, as well as others whose current fates are unknown.

The best works by current European students will be shown in the Trade Fair Palace for the third time at the exhibition of the StartPoint 2017 competition finalists. The announcement of the winner of this award to be bestowed for the 15th year will be part of the opening.

The President’s lounge will host the long-term project Introducing – this time it is the exhibition called Fasting by the Portuguese artist Pedro Henriques, who displays his odd objects accompanied with a video by the Portuguese artist and academician Miguel Soares.

Last but not least, the Autumn Opening also opens the previously inaccessible premises of Hall A of the Trade Fair Palace to the public with a long-term exhibition of artworks by František Skála, which the National Gallery in Prague acquired at a recent display in the Wallenstein Riding School Gallery.

“The unprecedented success of this exhibition, which was visited by more than 60,000 people, inspired us to display Skála’s artworks in the Trade Fair Palace on a long-term basis. Some of them were acquired for our collections, others were donated or loaned to the National Gallery by the artist. On October 18, Autumn Opening visitors can look forward to seeing the Tooth of Time, several of the mysterious museum pavilions and more,” added Fajt.

The exhibition Julian Rosefeldt: Manifesto is held as part of the Echoes of the Czech-German Cultural Spring 2017 – the cultural initiative of the Embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany in Prague, Goethe-Institut in Prague, Czech-German Fund for the Future and the Czech centres in Berlin and Munich in cooperation with the Ministry of Culture and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Czech Republic.