Havel in a Nutshell

American presidential libraries offer the public and schools information on individual U.S. presidents, and, through them, on the historical eras in which they presided. The Václav Havel Library, which is the only such institution in the Czech Republic, has opened an exhibition according to this model, documenting the life of Václav Havel and, through him, the transformation of the Czech society of his and our times. The exhibition entitled “Václav Havel – Czech Myth” was temporarily housed at Hergetova Cihelna in Prague’s Lesser Quarter. Now it has moved to new premises and has acquired a new form, as well as a new purpose.

The Montmartre Gallery in Řetězová St. in the Old Town, one of the ancient centres of Prague’s Czech-German-Jewish avant-garde, favoured by Jaroslav Hašek and also Franz Kafka, has become the new location for the exhibition and at the same time the new centre of the activities of the Václav Havel Library. The new exhibition has been created in two rooms on the first floor above the Montmartre Gallery. It preserves the structure of the original structure created by Martin C. Putna, pursuing individual periods of Havel’s life (family and literary origins – theatre – dissident life – presidency). It also maintains a set of exhibits, often unique documents from private archives. The elements of humour and irony – without which the Václav Havel exhibition would run the risk of becoming only an instrument of the “cult of personality” – has been preserved and enhanced. Newly added, however, are accompanying texts. They enable the orientation in the realms of historical and other facts of either a totally uninformed visitor without any wider historical education, a secondary school student, or a foreign tourist. The artistic layout of the exhibition is also new, due to the possibilities provided by the new premises. By this means, a project that can both literally and figuratively be called “Havel in a Nutshell” has been created.

The exhibition is designed in a way that allows for the presentation of various accompanying programmes. The Václav Havel Library offers an educational programme for secondary schools and for the final years of primary schools, providing young people, through the exhibition and through Václav Havel’s texts, with the opportunity to study critical thinking about modern Czech history. At the same time, seminars, chronological exhibitions of photographs, documents and previews of books published by the Václav Havel Library are held on the premises. The activities of the Library began in the autumn of 2008, with the staging of a performance by the Belarusian Underground Theatre and the successful show “We Had the Underground and Now We Have Zilch” among its first activities. In addition, club meetings, known after the previous venue as “Amalie”, will be moved here. The rooms of the Václav Havel Library in Řetězová St. have thus become one of the new centres of Prague and Czech intellectual life.

The newspaper Hospodářské noviny is the exhibition’s media partner.

Most of the exhibits were donated by Václav Havel, while some documents have been borrowed from the Memorial of National Literature, the Theatre Institute and the Theatre Na Zábradlí. We thank them for their loan!