Veletržní Palác
The National Gallery, Prague
Expecting to find an aging Medieval palace, The Veletržní Palác (Trade-Fair Palace) is nothing of the sort: located in a 1920’s streamline-modernism structure, Prague’s National Gallery is a bizarre hybrid of a poorly-curated museum and overly-ambitious community center where an abundance of art works are assembled against plaster walls painted in pastel-nausea color palette. Leftover Van Gogh’s and forgotten Picasso’s blend into salmon-pink and teenage-purple backdrops while sweaty guards socialize across the gallery’s extruded central atrium. An elusive glimpse of a large Lichtenstein is the sole reminder that we are, in fact, in a somewhat Western-art-aspiring culture.
~ Gili Merin
images by Gili Merin
