A Prague gallery documents the subjugation of Slovak culture.
Bit of a cultural tip: if you want to know what happens when you put far-right populists in charge of your cultural institutions, check out the Prague City Gallery’s House of Photography.
As I wrote for Deutsche Welle, an exhibition called Free National Gallery. Description of a Struggle documents the decline and fall of Slovakia’s national museum of art, the Slovak National Gallery (SNG).
The exhibition, which will run until 29 March, carries an implicit warning for Czech culture, too.
Alexandra Kusa had been director of the Slovak National Gallery for 14 years when Prime Minister Robert Fico formed his fourth administration in 2023. She’d been a curator there for the previous decade.
Well-regarded both at home and abroad, she had recently overseen an ambitious renovation project of the gallery’s main site in Bratislava, on the Danube embankment.
But when Martina Simkovicova, elected as an MP for the nationalist Slovak National Party, was appointed as the new minister of culture, Alexandra could see the writing on the wall.
“The culture of the Slovak people should be Slovak. Slovak and no other. We tolerate other national cultures, but our culture is not a mixing of other cultures,” Simkovicova told reporters in November 2023, setting out what would be her policy priorities.
It wasn’t long before she began purging Slovakia’s cultural scene of those she said were pushing a liberal agenda.
The director of the Slovak National Library was removed, followed by the director of the Slovak National Theater.
Alexandra drafted a public letter of support to her colleague at the National Theater.
She was fired the next day.
She laughed out loud when she told me the official reasons for her sacking.
“First it was because the gallery was empty. Then because it was too full.”
“Then it was because there was no Slovak flag outside the building. Then it was because of the renovation work,” Kusa told me by phone from Bratislava.
The ministry accused her of nepotism, because her architect father had been involved in drawing up the winning design.
He had indeed — in 2005, five years before she became director.
“They never announced the real reason, which is that they simply didn’t want to work with us. Which is a shame, because it was the truth.”
LGBT Propaganda
Not that Alexandra held out much hope for a fruitful working relationship with the new minister.
Martina Simkovicova rose to prominence during Covid, co-presenting a YouTube channel with her partner that offered a steady stream of disinformation about the virus and vaccines.
Today both are MPs, and enjoy senior positions in the Slovak government.
She has prioritized state support for what she calls “traditional Slovak values” as opposed to “liberal” art that she alleges pushes a minority agenda, such as LGBT rights.
“We heterosexuals are capable of creating the future, because we can have children, right?” she told an interviewer in 2024.
“Europe’s dying out, no new children are being born, because there’s an overload of LGBT people. And I think it’s strange that all this is happening to the white race.”
House of Ghosts
Kusa’s sacking was followed by public demonstrations at the SNG, three interim directors in short succession, the departure of over 100 curators and staff, exhibitions cobbled together with little curation, and the creation last summer of a rival symbolic protest space next door called the “Free National Gallery.”
This is all meticulously documented by the Prague City Gallery exhibition, which was curated by Kusa. It’s a grim autopsy of the dismantling and hollowing out of a revered cultural institution.
Today, says Alexandra, the Slovak National Gallery is “a house of ghosts.”
“We’ve seen what they put on show. Just a bit of folklore, a few flags on buildings. It’s not culture. It’s cliche,” she said.
Many rooms are empty or sparsely filled, she told me. There are no major exhibitions planned. Most artists have shunned the gallery. Visitor numbers have fallen to a trickle. International partners have withdrawn.
The Culture Ministry’s remit in each country extends to their national broadcasters.
In Slovakia, Simkovicova has already overseen a process of bringing Slovak TV and Radio under much tighter government control through “restructuring.”
There were public protests by staff and civil society groups when the previous broadcaster – RTVS – was shut down. It was promptly reopened with a new director and a new name; STVR.
Prominent journalists and editors left. Others were fired by the new management. A friend told me she and her colleagues were feeling increasingly numb and frustrated at the limitations placed upon them.
Many employees of Czech TV and Czech Radio worry the same fate awaits them. Prime Minister Andrej Babis’ government has pledged to scrap the licence fee and replace it with direct funding from the state budget.
Fears for the stations’ editorial independence from politicians are mounting. A petition campaign is already underway, calling for the principles of public broadcasting to be upheld.
Thanks for a Great Meeting
Martina Simkovicova was in Prague recently to meet her Czech counterpart Oto Klempir, formerly a member of the Czech funk band J.A.R.
He caused some alarm by telling reporters afterward that the Slovaks “had a head start” in reforming their funding of public media. She’d advised him on what “pitfalls” to avoid, he said.
In December, Klempir expressed support for keeping the licence fee. By January, however, he was talking about full abolition, perhaps as soon as 2027.
The head of the Prague City Gallery, Magdalena Jurikova, told me that was one reason why they had decided to host the exhibition – to show how quickly open societies can buckle under pressure from populism and far-right extremism.
To those who say, “Well, the Czech Republic isn’t Slovakia, Babis isn’t Fico,” Alexandra Kusa has a stark message:
“That’s what we told ourselves in 2023 – ‘Slovakia isn’t Hungary. Fico isn’t Orban.’”
“Now look at us.”
Rob Cameron is a journalist and broadcaster based in Prague. He is the BBC correspondent for the Czech Republic and Slovakia. This article originally appeared in the Substack newsletter, Based in Bohemia. Republished by permission.
