Národní galerie Praha

The National Gallery Prague is a research organization whose main purpose is to carry out basic and applied research and experimental development and to disseminate their results through scientific publications, exhibitions, educational programs, methodologies, etc. technology transfer. The original idea behind the birth of NG is present in all the complex vicissitudes of its development: to raise the spirit of the nation through works of art. In this ideal, we see the mission of the National Gallery in Prague even today.

The National Gallery in Prague collects, registers, permanently preserves, professionally processes and makes available to the public works of painting, sculpture and graphics and works from the so-called new media of the domestic and foreign art and researches them scientifically; is a museum in the sense of the provisions on the protection of collections of a museum nature and on the amendment of some other laws.

The history of the Prague National Gallery began to be written on February 5, 1796, when a group of prominent representatives of the patriotic Czech nobility, together with several scholars from among the ranks of the enlightened bourgeoisie decided, to use the terminology of the time, to raise the fallen artistic taste of the domestic public. The corporation, called the Society of Patriotic Friends of the Arts, then founded two important institutions that Prague lacked: the Academy of Arts and the publicly accessible Art Gallery. It was the Gallery of the Society of Patriotic Friends of Art that became the direct predecessor of the National Gallery in Prague. In 1902, another important institution was added to the Gallery - the Modern Gallery of the Kingdom of Bohemia as a private foundation of Emperor Francis Joseph I. The Modern Gallery then began to build a core collection of 20th century Czech art.

In 1918, the Gallery of the Society of Patriotic Friends of the Arts turned into the central art collection of the new state. In 1919, Vincenc Kramař took over the management of the Gallery, who in a short time transformed it into a relatively modern, professionally managed gallery. In the difficult wartime period, in 1942, the funds of the abolished Modern Gallery came under the administration of the National (officially Czech-Moravian Provincial) Gallery. The NG Act of 1949 then legally sanctified this status.