National Museum (Prague)

Czech museum institution

The National Museum (NM) (Czech: Národní muzeum) is a Czech museum institution intended to systematically establish, prepare, and publicly exhibit natural scientific and historical collections. It was founded in 1818 by Kašpar Maria Šternberg. Historian František Palacký was also strongly involved in the foundation of the museum. The National Museum houses nearly 14 million items from the areas of natural history, history, arts, music and librarianship, which are located in dozens of museum buildings. The main building of the National Museum was renovated from 2011–2019, and permanent exhibitions began to be opened from Spring 2020.

Even before the French Revolution some royal and private collections of art, science and culture were made available to the public but in the XIX century all big cities need at least a museum. The beginnings of the museum can be seen as far back as 1796 when the private Society of Patriotic Friends of the Arts was founded by Count Casper Sternberk Manderschied and a group of other prominent nobles. The avowed purpose of the society was "the renewed promotion of art and taste". In 1800, the group founded the Academy of Fine Arts, which trained students in progressive forms of art and history.

The National Museum in Prague was founded on April 15, 1818. It was founded by Count Sternberk, the first president of the Society of the Patriotic Museum who served as the trustee and operator of the museum. The early focus of the museum was natural sciences, partially because Count Sternberk was a botanist, mineralogist, and eminent phytopaleontologist, but also because of the natural science slant of the times, as perpetrated by Emperor Joseph II of Austria. The museum was originally located in the Sternberg Palace. When the venue became too small to house the museum's collections, the museum relocated to the Nostitz Palace. That too had insufficient capacity, which led to the construction of a new museum building in Wenceslas Square. The museum did not acquire historical objects until the 1830s and 1840s, when Romanticism arose. The institution of the museum was increasingly seen as a center for Czech nationalism. Serving as historian and secretary of the National Museum in 1841, František Palacký tried to balance natural science and history, as he described in his Treatise of 1841. However, it was not until nearly a century later that the National Museum's historical treasures equaled its collection of natural science artifacts. The museum brought about an intellectual shift in Prague. The Bohemian nobility had, until this time, been prominent, both politically and fiscally, in scholarly and scientific groups. However, the National Museum was created to serve all the inhabitants of the land, lifting the stranglehold the nobility had had on knowledge. This was further accelerated by the historian František Palacký, who in 1827 suggested that the museum publish separate journals in German and Czech. Previously, the vast majority of scholarly journals were written in German, but within a few years the German journal had ceased publication, while the Czech journal continued for more than a century. In 1949, the national government took over the museum and detailed the museum's role and leadership in the Museum and Galleries Act of 1959. In May 1964, the Museum was turned into an organization of five professionally autonomous components, which included the Museum of Natural Science, the Historical Museum, the Naprstek Museum of Asia, African, and American Cultures, the National Museum Library, and the Central Office of Museology. A sixth autonomous unit, the Museum of Czech Music, was established in 1976.

The New Building of the National Museum (former Federální Shromáždění Building) is located next to the Main Building of the National Museum. The former Prague Stock Exchange was built in 1937. The building was extended in 1968–1973 for meetings of the Federal Assembly (parliament), the bridge girder was used there and at that time it was the largest hung glass wall in Czechoslovakia. Between 1995 and 2009 it was used by the Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. In 2000, the Ministry of Culture declared the building a cultural monument. In 2009, the building was assigned to the National Museum for its permanent extension and is used for short term exhibitions. In 2019, the building was connected to the historical building through a tunnel. In 2021, the permanent exhibition History of the 20th Century was opened here.

The National Museum currently contains several million items of material in three main parts: the Natural History Museum, the Historical Museum and the Library.

In 2010, the museum moved their collections to Prague 10, Horní Počernice. It has departments of mineralogy, paleontology, mycology, botany, entomology, zoology and anthropology, as well as scientific laboratories. It is also the home of the Czech bird ringing scheme, and a member of the European Union for Bird Ringing (EURING).

The medieval collection includes jewelry, panel painting, wooden sculpture, and weapons (also such as used in the Hussite movement of the 15th century). In addition to their historical value, many of the objects held by this department contain a high artistic value. Examples of precious objects include: a silver tiara of a duke from the twelfth century; Medieval, Renaissance and Baroque jewelry; liturgical objects from the Medieval period, which include several chalices, the reliquary of St Eligius in the shape of mitre; Gothic and Renaissance glazed tiles and paving stones; precious embroidery of Rosenberg antependium dated about 1370; and fine Bohemian porcelain and glass collection from before the 18th and 19th centuries, as well as collections of painted portraits and miniature painting.

The Department of Prehistory and Protohistory contains a rich collection of artifacts which were used in daily life thousands of years ago. The curators of this collection were also among the first Czech archeologists: J. L. Píč, curator of one of the collections from 1893 to 1911 is credited with conducting the first system archeological field exploration in Czechoslovakia. The department also maintains collections in the field of classical archaeology; however, its main value is in the documentation of Greek and Roman arts and crafts. Among its most valuable objects are a painted dish of Nikosthenes, a glass bottle from the port of Puteolo, and a gilded silver rhyton. The Collection of Classical Archaeology belongs to the same department. The Department of the Old Czech History has assembled numerous objects which trace the development of the Czech state beginning from the Slavonic culture of the 10th century up to the independent republic of Czechoslovakia in 1918. This is done through the acquisition of objects which recall figures of Czech culture and leadership. The collection of archaeology concerns many objects from archaeological excavation of the land (ceramics, metals, stone), artifacts of painting, sculpture and decorative arts beginning from the Roman period through Gothic, Renaissance and Baroque style up to the Romanticism of the 19th century. The Department of Ethnography – The stated aim of this department is to gather, in a systemic manner, factual material and data about the history and culture of the people of Czechoslovakia and the other nations of Europe, from the end of the 17th century to the present day. Much of the focus is placed on Slavic nations. The oldest ethnographic collections of the National Museum were inherited from the Jubilee Exhibition of 1891, with the result being that much of the focus has shifted to the past half century, and the collections of the department are filled with simple wood and ceramic objects, which show the gradual shift from a rural society to one that has become increasingly urbanized. Department of Numismatics – Among the oldest departments in the Museum, it was founded through the gift of Count Sternberk. The goal of this department is to achieve a complete collection of legal tender coins used in past and present day Czechoslovakia. In addition, the department has a large number of foreign coin collections, the most valuable of these being a collection of coins of classical antiquity. Along with collecting coins, the department also maintains a large collection of medals. At present day, the National Museum contains approximately half a million objects. Emanuela Nohejlová Prátová was department curator from 1930 to 1959. Department of Theater – Originally part of the National Museum Library, it was set up as a separate entity in 1930. Its first collections were primarily drawn from the archives of two theaters: the National Theater and the theater Vinohardy. In the following years, the collections were greatly expanded by the department's founder, Jan Bartos, and his successor, Joseph Knap. The department today contains extensive exhibits on the history of theater in Czechoslovakia, costume designs by prominent Czech artists, music, memorabilia, and items from the Czech puppet theater. The collections primarily contain stagecraft items from the middle of the 19th century to the present day, with efforts being made to enlarge the department's exhibits from the 18th century.

The museum has featured as Vatican City, in the 2004 film EuroTrip.