Transcript for Episode 080 – Curator + Professor, Michal Novotný, National Gallery Prague (Prague, Czech Republic)

Recorded April 29, 2020
Published June 16, 2020

Full recording here: https://wisefoolpod.com/curator-michal-novotny-national-gallery-of-prague-prague-czech-republic/

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Matthew Dols 0:12
So I’ve been reflecting on why I do this podcast. I do it because I’m a teacher. I’m an artist, I’m inquisitive. I sincerely want to know the answers to these questions. But mostly because I, I feel like by creating this podcast, it tries to assist in making it so that we’re not all alone in these problems. There are many issues in the arts world, and in the art market that we don’t talk about, that we don’t learn about, we don’t discuss and get better at, we don’t get the feedback, we need to be more successful. And now I want to help not just myself, but everybody else that’s listening to this to be more successful. I want to remove the idea of starving artists from our lexicon. I don’t want artists to have to be starving anymore. I want to make sure that we all can be successful. We can’t strive for some amount of success together, we’re going to have problems doing it by ourselves. Too many people in the arts world think that it’s a sort of an individual process. And it’s not it’s takes a group of people, many people, supportive people, helpful people, constructive people. And I want to try and connect you with some of them their knowledge, some of their insights, some of their abilities, possibly even to them, so that you can learn and get better and grow. And learn from my mistakes. Everybody shouldn’t have to make mistakes in order to learn. But hopefully through either my mistakes or their mistakes, you can learn to avoid things or to work more in a particular direction in order to be more successful, easier, easier than I had it easier than they had. And we all can do better. And we all can be better, especially in these tough times right now with the unknown future of the arts world. Need to try and get creative. Try to learn from each other instead of be competition. And I can’t be in your studio. And you can’t be in mind, at least not very easily. But we can still learn from each other and try and get better. Because an artistic career is a lifetime. And if you have any questions that you want me to ask guests in the future, some very particular things, some unique things that only you’re going through, please feel free to send me an email or a message on social media. And I’ll be sure to include it when I have a guest who could give a helpful answer to you. Enjoy. Please pronounce your name correctly. For me.

Michael Novotny 3:07
Michelle Novotny,

Matthew Dols 3:09
and you currently are the director of contemporary and modern art at the National Gallery of Prague. Correct?

Michael Novotny 3:16
Correct. Which, however, means post or

Matthew Dols 3:20
post work.

Michael Novotny 3:22
So first 1945, more or less, the selection is being done artist by artist, whether the core of their work was prayer, the war or after the war. So more or less, it’s something more like 1940 to 1943. But it means more or less in the context of the museums that have collections of postwar. So I am not responsible for the 20s and 30s. So for something that is called like some classical modern nity. Let’s say

Matthew Dols 3:57
the art world loves sort of putting us in little pigeon holes and niching us into different little things. So this is just another one. It’s fine. Yes. So one of the first things actually I like to hear about is, how did you get into being creative in the first place? So were your parents creative? Did you have some teachers some experience like how did you even find your creative path coming down?

Michael Novotny 4:23
It’s a complicated question. Also, as I teach, nowadays on the Academy of architecture and design, I see of course, many artists coming from a certain background. From a working class, you don’t very often have the idea to even become an artist, not speaking about the resources needed, but I’m actually from a sort of working class family. So maybe it was some kind of inner portion that I was always enjoying from art forums, whether it be literature movies, when I was a teenager But the real impulse was that I fell in love. When I was 20. I fell in love with an artist. And she was older than me. And she was already professional or working professionally. So she also introduced me to a lot of things. In the contemporary art before I was not exactly a specialist, I studied philosophy. So I was studying the general part of it.

Matthew Dols 5:28
If you don’t mind me asking, how old are you now?

Michael Novotny 5:31
I’m 35.

Matthew Dols 5:33
You’re young. Okay. I’m 46. So

Michael Novotny 5:37
it’s always a question of point of view. Certainly, if I started to be the four artists, specifically, no more young, you cannot reach to most of the grants and prices that are limited by this age.

Matthew Dols 5:50
I know I got to Europe when I was 44. And I started very quickly learning that in Europe, 35 seems to be the age cut off for young and emerging artists kind of thing.

Michael Novotny 6:04
curators have a different bit. I think it’s easier at the beginning, because of course, just from the very position, you get some sort of power because you are the one who gets to choose. But then the later on in your career, it’s more and more about politics. You know, nobody is looking so much to find good curators, while Hollywood curators are looking to find artists. So as an artist, you can be discovered and you can be found. But as a curator, it’s mainly about how well you managed to navigate yourself in the system.

Matthew Dols 6:41
I want to hear more about that what you just said that that’s a fascinating topic. So a like how do you find artists, so for your own, neither you because you’ve done lots of work, you’ve been super productive, your CV is incredibly impressive. I must say, by the way, you know, you worked at future, you’ve done International Studies, you’ve done residencies, you’ve done all kinds of really great stuff. So when you as a curator, how do you find new artists? And then of course, like playing that political game later on in your career, like how do you? Because you went from sort of a nonprofit organization now to a government organization? So like, how did why did that transition happen? And was it good or bad? Did it difficulties easy?

Michael Novotny 7:38
So I started with the artist. Yeah, a lot of people will ask me, How do I find my fish? With through many channels, I still believe in exhibitions. Like lately, of course, since I work at the National Gallery, and less but I was visiting, of course, enormous amount of exhibitions before I was traveling extensively. And when wherever I would go, I would see as much as I could. It was always but it’s also generational. I see my students are not at all like that, because they have all the informations at the hand, they’re more scared by the information, they’re overwhelmed by the information, they’re not looking at much. And even as a teacher, you need to give them just a bit, you know, very precisely chosen, selected created information knowledge with richer artworks. So but me I’m still from the generation, we were hungry for art and for information. So I was like, really extensively going extensively, seeing shows, reading, magazines, watching online. But I mean, after all, after a while, maybe 10 years or so you kind of get the image, and you don’t need to do it that much. And then of course, after again, another generation come and you lose, you lose the sensitivity, you lose a bit the image, you lose a bit the map that you build, but most of the people, of course, remain within the regeneration. But it’s a bit specific was it now for my position that I work with really big age gap, my students are 22. And I work with artists that are 80 or 90 years old. And I see more and more how big this gap is between the generation. However there is starts to be even gap between me and my students because I am no more that spontaneously getting what they mean because they don’t know what their meaning they are doing it but they don’t understand really what their meaning. But then in the frame of opinions of whatever. Of course, the gap between the 80 or 90 years old and the young ones is enormous. It’s almost not to understand, or the even the kind of terminology when it comes to art and life is really so different. So I think that the main point after you once made the image of a generation is to be able to make the other generation to kind of keep track of what’s going on in the generation and the same time, deepen Connections is the older artists. But it’s also it’s intuition as well, I, because I always choose in the sense intuitively, I believe in the work somehow, like the recent exhibition I did, of course gave over here, which is a large retrospective that close just one week after we open it, because of the pandemic situation, it was also a lot of intuition, I feel that there was something that he did in the 70s and 80s, it was very exceptional, even in the international way. So I’m trying to show it. But also, I need to also calculate that this exhibition needs to have some visitors ship, let’s say amongst the white public, right, it cannot be only for the specialists, or only for my students who are already in their staff, because I work at the government institution. So it’s always the point how to make everything like work together. And especially from the creator point of view, how to make the work of artists look better. So what I see mainly as a role of curator not to choose who is good, but to be actually able to make anyone better. It’s kind of I even said several times, I see it as a kind of public lawyer, like, I can get any case, and I will try to do my best, of course, there is some ethical, ethical limits to who I work with. But I am not trying specifically not to choose like or, see, I’m trying not to pay so much attention to my kind of idea of what is the best but rather, what is the best in within the certain context of our time of our space,

Matthew Dols 11:40
it’s it’s a very interesting perspective to take on curating the idea that you’re given an artist or you choose an artist, and then it’s your role to convince us of their worthiness or whatever you want to put to it. Like that’s, that’s nice. I like that. So you also teach,

Michael Novotny 12:00
yes, I teach the assistant in painting studio. But it’s not the painting studio anymore. Nobody’s painting there, I’d say 40% of painting, but it’s open. But it’s again, I don’t teach like, I don’t teach them so much theory, even though I try to teach them but it’s mainly about speaking, we’re meeting and we’re speaking about their work. And the main point is usually just if they really managed to achieve what they presume to achieve, both formally and content wise,

Matthew Dols 12:35
what I mean, that’s a big issue. This is something that I talk about on this podcast quite frequently is the making beautiful objects, performances, whatever piece of art reasonably comes somewhat easily to artists, because we’ve chosen the profession we’ve that’s our vernacular that we’ve chosen to express ourselves in. And then the need to also be able to talk about art or write statements about our art, oftentimes, we find to be exceptionally difficult for us.

Michael Novotny 13:06
Sure, that, I mean, of course, there is also some, but it was also there was a time where maybe this was okay. It’s also the professionalization of art, that everything becomes much more competitive, right? I mean, and really more and more early on. What we’ve also witnessed the last two years, there were a certain kind of limits that were given, which were damaged, because some artists, for example, very unconscious, could not have, until very recently large institutional exhibitions. It’s only the last decade where this rule was sort of abolished, and we see very young artists, 23 year old artists who are doing huge museum exhibitions, which was never before the case. But So on one hand, there is, of course, this professionalization, the also the quantification, of course we’re all doing more and more. And this is, of course, I’ve been doing a lot, maybe even too much question. Because the more we are doing, the more we’re also losing it, because everything accelerate with the fact that you know, and with exhibitions, it’s also special because there is no there is art history, but there is not much curatorial history or external exhibitions. It doesn’t exist so much. So exhibition has this specific format that you do and it ends and it’s over. And you know, you cannot really show it you have of course documentation, you may have a catalog, but you see it’s really something that was really based in this time. And if you do an artwork most of the time you can keep it you can re exhibit it also within the system that we are all operating. There are some people interested because they want to rewrite the story but the exhibition is a bit something else but they also like this element of ephemera. And some projects I did they already go And somehow nobody will see them anymore. Even if there’s been a lot of effort at work. Yeah, but I think that maybe the things got lately a bit too fast everywhere. And that’s also why maybe also within the last one month and a half. And so I’m not the only one who is already questioning this quantification in the speech, we were all into Madigan, I don’t think so much it will change, it would need to be much longer for the system to change structurally, most probably will just get back to the same insanity rhythm as we had before. Because it is, in a sense, kind of, it got also professionalized in the sense of a sport, it’s really a question of performance, you need to kind of keep yourself well, you need to be really giving a lot of you this romantic idea of some sort of drunk artists, creating fantastic painting in a cellar is gone, you need to be flexible, you need to be beautiful, you need to be available to speak language, you need to be smart, you need to explain while your work, charmed people have a lot of network, so there is a lot more than the actual art. But probably, this is always been the idea that we’re judging art, because of some kind of internal essence that is good, is a bit artificial. And this is also one of the reasons why I’m actually trying to restrain myself in this regard, because I’m not, I wouldn’t dare to claim that I know something better than the other No, because this would also mean that the art has some kind of in inner core that it’s of good quality or bad quality. While we very much know that is mainly the infrastructure that creates inequality, if you put something in the museum, people look at it very differently than if you have it in a small gallery. And the way the system is working, that of course, the capital is creating the quality. And not only that, this kind of autonomy of art. So the way the art is constituted itself in the mid 19th century, which is something very specific and unique, that we claim for this autonomy that we don’t need to sell the art. Nobody needs to like it. And it still can be great. Even the contrary, most of the time, we agree that the architect didn’t sell at all and nobody liked it was actually finally the best is a very good idea. But it’s never been entirely accomplished. I would even say maybe not even house accomplished. Yeah.

Matthew Dols 17:40
You covered a lot of topics there. So yes, yeah. Okay, back to teaching. So are you you’re currently t How long have you been teaching?

Michael Novotny 17:51
For three years, I’ve been teaching occasionally before, but regularly for three years.

Matthew Dols 17:57
What because I’ve been a professor for off and on about for almost 20 years and and I’m a bit disillusioned by the current state of academia. Of course, I keep mine I come from America, and I was teaching in the Middle East. And now I’m here in Prague. And it’s I mean, teachers are treated generally really poorly as far as like their incomes. And they’re all these kinds of things like I know, here in the Czech Republic, they pay horribly to teachers. But there’s a great respect for teachers. So like they they have a certain level of esteem, but they are generally very

Michael Novotny 18:36
broke. So just if any of you cannot live, of course on it, it’s only a suicide joke letter.

Matthew Dols 18:43
I did it full time for 15 years. But not here.

Michael Novotny 18:47
That’s Yeah, exactly. In here. It’s not I mean, again, the way it’s designed, everybody needs to have something else I would need to live very, very modestly. I would say it’s maybe half of the average salary.

Matthew Dols 19:00
Right? So as a teacher, like, I feel like the current state of academia is not preparing young, the next generation of artists for the reality of the world that they’re going to go into, you know, we’re not training them enough on things like what you do, which is fabulous, which is you know, how to talk about your artwork, how to write about your artwork, how to do this kind of stuff, which will help them greatly in doing things like writing for grants, getting residencies, all these other things, which these days are the things that they need to be able to achieve? And I don’t feel like that that’s a huge thing, industry wide in academia.

Michael Novotny 19:45
So, but I would say that it’s also kind of but contemporary art is full of contradictions, right, but one contradiction. The main is that we are also pretending that they will all become professional artists. Why? In the reality 95% of them will not become professional artists, and probably 80% or so will stop within two years after they finish their degree. So that’s also one that’s already one thing. But that we’re still kind of aiming on this idea of you will do only art while it’s impossible. But there is also something which I’m thinking a lot lately that the artist kind of liberated itself from the crafts, of course, threw out already the 20th century and liberated itself a lot, from a lot. And the way the academic was established, or the way the Academy was functioning, since the 2030s was the the students were in the studio, and they were, you know, painting or sculpting and the teacher, I mean, all day long, more or less, and the teacher would be going around and saying, Please do a bit less here on the elbow, or was even painted here a bit deeper. This was the academic basically, and this was the master teacher system that we’re still having here, our studio with like one or two master teachers. And then the liberation sort of happened liberation in the 90s, but the system remained the same. So we even get to the point where we’re actually not teaching them anything, because we removed the sort of, you know, content of the teaching, while meaning you know, to learn how to do anatomy to learn how to do this, this and that. And we kind of they arrive, and we sort of strydom directly as an artist, because we give them the freedom, again, in quotes. And but this freedom is unbearable for many, because they arrived from a high school and we tell them, okay, so. So next week, can you bring something you’re working on? And they’re like, I don’t, I don’t know what what am I supposed to do, you know, the freedom is very unbearable, it’s very difficult to be refund if you don’t get an extractor. And of course, we’re trying to help them. And in this sense, this can be also good. But let’s say that not for everyone, and maybe we as it’s very often in the society, we kind of remove the content, but we we let the structure exists, the structure that was entirely tied to a complete different set of content.

Matthew Dols 22:15
Not only that, but like, we don’t teach them the realities of being an artist. I mean, in this day and age, the realities of being an artist are that you also have to a you have to create amazing work in whatever way that is. Be you have to understand why you made it so that you can write eloquently or speak eloquently about it, and then see you have to run it like a business. Because it mean if at the least you just have to keep up with your inventory or make sure you’re not going over budget and all these kinds of things like these, it’s a lot of these business things that we don’t prepare them for enough.

Michael Novotny 22:53
Sure. So, I mean, again, of course I try. I mean, because I in this, but the question again, to which it’s, it’s also a question of capital, to start a business, you need to have some capital. And if you don’t have the capital, it’s complicated, how long they will have? I mean, more and more, again, unfortunately, or Fortunately, the way the the art of maybe last 50 years has constituted itself is based on the speculation model. You are investing money. And of course, the question is how many years you can last. And you’re expecting by earning ears and ears and ears not saying that at the end, you will get it all back and much more, right? Of course, majority of the people don’t have the capital to survive 10 years without any income 15 years without any income. And I think this is the absolute minimum you need to count before some revenues will go back. And then those are the the other contradiction the system is that what what becomes to be the rule is that the winner takes all in a sense that at least before there was some sort of maybe I’m romanticizing it, but I think there was some sort of possibility to sell some artwork for some artists, because if you were doing some painting, you could either pay your rent potentially by painting the person or giving him landscape or something. But as we kind of, mainly in the 70s in America, as we dematerialized the art object, it became the same sense as the currency. It’s only a question of speculation, it has no real value. And this also leads to the fact that the the artworks are actually extremely expensive, right? So the artists who sell are extremely expensive, and we even unbelievably expensive, but the rest, the 99% doesn’t sell nothing. So it’s either or, again, it’s not kind of surviving. It’s either you make it or you die for on the way. This is also something that is not really great, but we ourselves constituted the system. It’s not that somebody impose it on us.

Matthew Dols 25:03
As far as my perception is, you you in your role as the curator are often the gatekeepers of a lot of the accessibility. So oftentimes I find that an artist is introduced to a gallery via a curator or a gallery will elevate an artist to an institutional level, again, through a curator. So like the curators seem to be a lot of the sort of focal point. So like, everything funnels down to a curator, they can somehow get you to the other side as a creative person.

Michael Novotny 25:41
Maybe it’s, again, a bit overestimated. I mean, the curators needs,

Matthew Dols 25:47
I give you all a lot of power, yes,

Michael Novotny 25:50
I need to make eye contact with anybody else in the system do people need to sort of appreciate what I’m doing. And again, the higher or let’s say, on the wider scale, and wider reach, such as in large institutions, it’s very often also securing the funding. So you cannot just exhibit anybody you want, because you think his work is great. But more and more, many, or even majority of large institutions are for more than a half depending on private funding. And this private funding is, again, very often provided by galleries, or by collectors who already collected these artists work. So one of those, it’s sort of even more balancing between providing something that you really believe it’s good in the artistic sense, but that you can also manage to raise money for to be able to do it. So there is a lot of things and even even on the smaller level, you You’re still depending on the size that you need to convince the other people that what you’re working with on what you’re showing is good.

Matthew Dols 26:59
And that’s a question that I have had about museums all over the world is like, how do the programs get created? You know, so like, literally, if you’re sitting in your office, you can choose to exhibit or create an exhibition revolving around a concept of anything in the world. So how do you even start the process of whittling down any topic and any artist in the world down to what you end up presenting in your institution,

Michael Novotny 27:30
maybe again, it’s like in any other business, there is, of course, the possibility to do any sort of business. But any sort of business you want to enter, you need to get an image of what the others are doing. If you’re selling pizza on every corner, it might be difficult to open another pizza, you need to really do well, the pizza. So of course you’re looking what the other museums are doing. And maybe where is the sort of gap in the market that you can do something that will work. This is the main, the main thing, I mean, or not the main thing, but the first thing, because the main thing is to manage to pass the project through all the other gatekeepers, which are not only financial, but also other curators, and boards of trustees and all these sorts of things, which on allows you because in many institutions, you don’t have really the power to sort of say, Okay, let’s do that and do it. This needs to be approved by so many people that it’s very long process.

Matthew Dols 28:30
Yeah, I was gonna say, just to clarify this for the listener. So you work for the National Gallery of Prague, which is a I’m not even perfectly clear on it. So it’s funded by the government, is that correct? It’s funded

Michael Novotny 28:42
by the government. But let’s say that in our case, it’s a bit more than 60% of the operational budget. So we need to find somewhere for the person. And of course, from the 60% 55 is mandatory costs. Yeah, because so mainly, all the budget for the exhibitions and other programs needs to be raised. And this is, of course, not only sponsoring, but we are managing to, to create to earn money or create money ourselves, because we are renting the spaces, et cetera, et cetera, we’re providing services. We’re also selling the tickets, of course that is, so this is a big revenue, etc, etc. But let’s say even in a in a country where everything is still so or I say, well, the wealth is reorganized by the state. Yeah, well, mainly, it’s about paying taxes and state give it back to the people. It’s not happening out of the state, like in the United States, where the sponsorship is mainly private, because due to the tax deduction, and so there is no tax deduction on auditing in Czech Republic, even in this context, still 40% needs to be kind of earned by on a free market, let’s say are not given to the institution.

Matthew Dols 29:59
as a as a curator who works at an institution in this kind of structure, do you also have to play the role of fundraiser as well for your own sort of projects or for the whole museum as a whole? Or is there sort of a separate fundraising arm?

Michael Novotny 30:16
That is a sort of separate and fundraising arm, which I think again, in this sort of setting that we have here, it should be, because it, it is also problematic if, for example, you’re creating an exhibition of a largely collected artists, and most probably, of course, the donors will be people who have already worked. So those are these artists in their collection, then, of course, they will want those works to be exhibited in this exhibition, because it adds value to it. So there should be some sort of division. Yeah, but again, it’s not everywhere, the same, but in here, I don’t need to personally raise money, even though of course, I need to take part in the fundraising events, etc, etc. But I don’t need to be the one who gives the cheque to be signed, or let’s say, to give the hat for the money to be put inside.

Matthew Dols 31:11
Yeah, I’m just wondering, like, you know, as, as larger institutions sort of pare down their their employees and stuff, it’s sort of like, who ends up having to do more than what their original job description was. So I was just wondering if it your job as a curator, potentially, it also then sort of made that not only do you have to curate, but you also have to seek funding for your own projects?

Michael Novotny 31:37
Yes, maybe other institutions is more. But again, the idea that I am curating is in reality that for me, it was even before when I work in kind of larger nonprofit organization, that 80% of my time, I’m doing a management position, and then maybe 20%. And even more out of the working hours, I can sort of do some sort of creative, artistic work. But as again, anywhere else, there is mainly a lot of administration management, I have seven people working for me, there is a lot of invoices, I need to also sign etc, etc, etc. So again, it’s not that I’m reading books, and you know, and writing text, unfortunately, but mainly,

Matthew Dols 32:26
coffee, smoking cigarettes, just hanging out in the coffee shop.

Michael Novotny 32:31
Yeah, no, and even in the National Gallery, as it’s really a lot exposed. Now, not, but prior to the lockdown, I used to have usually like three to five appointments a day, with whatever for projects that are running for people who are coming from outside who want something for, you know, just accumulate.

Matthew Dols 32:55
A one thing that was brought up earlier that I found sort of an interesting idea is the the nature of like, you can’t just pick something out of the air, you need to think of like what will the public be interested in? So they’re so like, how do you negotiate that balancing act of you want to put on something amazing, something that fills in that gap of what other institutions are not doing. But it also needs to have some amount of accessibility? Like, it seems like there’s a lot of sort of a movement to not be quite so intellectual and over the top and sort of elitist and pompous. So like you kind of have to find a balancing act of something amazing that that fills the hole the other institutions aren’t doing. But that also has an attractive quality to the general public.

Michael Novotny 33:46
Yeah, it’s again, some sort of intuition, of course. But again, I would say that I’m more thinking or, which is even more difficult and more thinking in some sort of dramaturgical lines. I’m not thinking about individual projects, or I’m not thinking about, let’s say, one exhibition, I’m thinking about what is the dramaturgy of trade for palace trade for a palace house for balconies, or one large exhibition space, there is the small hole that is the large hole. So I’m kind of thinking how to, within the financial limits, visit the capacity limits of the people working in here. And with all the obstacles, how can I sort of fill this up, that we have as large spectrum as possible, so that we have something accessible that can kind of help us to earn some money on the tickets, but we have also something that it’s for the art scene, or that is for the artist to help us it’s more specialized, that we have something from this generation that is older, but also from the young people. So I kind of my aim is always to do as large as you can to fail the sort of spectrum, proportionally to the cost and so on. And so this is I would say is maybe There is recipie that kind of worked for me so far. It’s not to follow one line that follow more lines, both what comes local, international, different generations, but also the accessibility. And so from the kind of art for the white public to the art for the artsy,

Matthew Dols 35:17
that’s good. I like the balance. It’s nice, because it could easily go one way or the other too easily. Yeah.

Michael Novotny 35:26
And then but of course, it’s, it’s again, though, you don’t know. But I mean, you know how many people will come you never know even if you’re organizing concerts, you may bring a star I don’t know it will be rainy or something people won’t come you’re so even in the Alto. So you can only predict you can sink. Okay, this will work for the people. And then again, it’s a question of PR and campaign and etc, etc. But you cannot really know. Exactly, you can just presume. Oh, yeah. And even some things that you think are quiet. On the artistic side can work. Finally,

Matthew Dols 36:05
it’s a tough I mean, the entire industry is built on like faith and, and a prayer basically, like we all hope that what we’re doing, whether we’re producing art or whether we’re putting on gallery exhibitions or putting on institutional exhibitions, that we just hope that people will see it like see it and understand it and want to engage in it.

Michael Novotny 36:25
Whether we did Giacometti for example, which was an extremely ambitious project, mainly to the financial cost. It’s astronomic, it was not really working on Well, those first months. But finally, it really good super boosted the last month and we reach the sort of line we wanted, which was 50,000 visitors. So you never know. But again, I think that Giacometti also may be in another country, and so it would work even better. But again, for example, Czech Republic has also the specificity that people are more going for the Czech artists or they are going for the International superstars, but it won’t be the same. Like you can get more entries with the checkout is done with someone like Giacometti. Really, yeah.

Matthew Dols 37:14
That’s fascinating. I was there first day for Giacometti. I thought that was magnificent. Oh,

Michael Novotny 37:19
thank you. But but we are a bit thing close. Yeah, I think also you can see as an invisible, shutting down the borders. It’s also a sort of expression of, of the mentality in RSM remainers of the mentality, at least subconsciously. So there is always this small nation has complex relation to the, you know, big events, but also to the big artists. And so

Matthew Dols 37:46
and you used to work at future, which is the nonprofit organization here in Prague as well. And they did they have a very good international range of artists coming and participating. was the sort of the turnout and the excitement difficult for international artists versus local artists there as well.

Michael Novotny 38:07
Yes, for tour that was specific in the sense, but it was really something as it’s very specialized. It’s it’s more research center. Again, I was always saying is it’s really somewhere in between. There is some aim for the popularity, of course, but it’s still really on the art side. And then we were running, of course, big residency programs. So artists were coming to Prague, there is of course, big differences within the I mean, among the cultures, so yes, the Czech people are not the most environments to welcome anybody I would say so of course, sometimes it’s it’s a bit not going super well. But I don’t know. But on the other end practice, so charming city, and the life is in a sense, so comfortable in here that D and also the artist life because there’s really a lot of relative quality programming here. The amount of activities that happens from the small spaces to the big spaces is enormous for the country has so there was not it was not so problematic. And then I think that it’s a bit the same Of course for the Czech people when they go abroad that we are, but we also suffer from this. We feel very self conscious. We feel very like under evaluated and where we have problems to behave normally because this often leads to arrogance as well. I think Czech people are very arrogant even though they don’t mean it. But in the sorts of international relationship where a kind of politeness and wrongness is just part of the working at us. We can be perceived very arrogant.

Matthew Dols 39:55
That’s fascinating to me, because I’ve found that oftentimes The Czech mentality is to attempt. Now it might be a false sense of this, but they attempt to come off as humble. But that might be actually like, for the arrogance, maybe.

Michael Novotny 40:13
Yeah, but there is a sort of. But but it’s also like, it’s very contradictory. I see it even in in here, initial gallery and so on the way foreigners are received, even if we have international collaboration is always easier. It’s very authoritative, or it’s very suspicious. Like, it’s it’s specific, but again, we have a long history of being invaded by whoever and being under the rule of whoever. So it has a certain route, of course, but when we say that 30 years after we are sort of part of the Europe it changed, but it didn’t. But again, let’s look on Poland. Let’s look on Hungary. And so let’s the wall, the problem of the wall block.

Matthew Dols 40:58
Oh, yeah, my wife has checked. So like, I hear a lot of this. And I had this debates and conversations quite frequently.

Michael Novotny 41:05
Yeah, but maybe they happen to my wife, for example, it’s very often happened that people kind of don’t believe she lives here, though, is asking, oh, you’re here still. And she like I’m living here. It’s quite well expressed that that it’s not that they want to be a nice, it’s not that they don’t want her here. But they don’t even believe that someone could like choose to live in here. Because we so much self perceived the country is not like the best place you want to live. Like you want to live in London, or you want to live in Paris versus from but why would you go and live in prac? This is this, this sort of that we don’t even believe in in us, which then can lead to the rudeness?

Matthew Dols 41:49
It’s an interesting perspective on it. Yeah, I document wrong. I’m an American, everybody thinks we’re rude. So I would actually say that over polite, even. But at least again, the people I worked with from United States, it’s it’s really we do a lot of we use a lot of words like, could and please and would you and we are very polite, I guess is the easiest word for it. But like we don’t make demands, we don’t make stern statements, we always ask, sort of open ended like, could we do this? Or would you like to do that? And it’s sometimes it comes off as overly flowery?

Michael Novotny 42:39
Yes, exactly. But again, of course, I am not saying you know that for for Czech people, this can be perceived as hypocritical. But on the other end is just, I don’t know, maybe you again, better if someone smiles at you artificially, then it is honestly rude to Yeah, in a sense, like it was a certain it’s nicer to work in this surrounding the newer ways, like don’t have the time. Oh, yeah.

Matthew Dols 43:10
I mean, that goes to something about the arts again, like is that I keep hearing stories, basically, that no matter what you do, and all that you still always should be a joy to work with. like nobody wants to work. Nobody wants to work with an asshole like you want, no matter who you work with. And so no matter what their quality of their work is, if you’re not a nice person, people won’t want to work with you.

Michael Novotny 43:37
Yeah, I would say that you need to end every collaboration with a sort of peaceful leaving, which is not very easy, because, of course, exhibitions is something that often is in a short time, and has a clear deadline, where the things needs to open to the public. And there is a lot a lot of work, it puts people under stress, and we’re very tired at the end. And so plus, it’s something that it’s not only professional, but it’s emotional, because two people are realizing themselves, they are not. I think all the artists I know are not doing it for the money. They’re doing it to be in a story. They’re doing it for themselves. They would exchange all the money for more opportunities, for more visibility and so on, really, I would say almost everybody and even if there is maybe a period that they turn to make it for the money, they will always miss the sort of Fame at the end is the main thing. So it’s again, it’s not a question of professional the question of emotions, it’s also can be very explosive. It’s not easy. I think it’s also needs to have a certain mindset think, you know, to be able to understand that because most of other people are not working like that they are going to the work they are doing it professionally. They may like it, they may love it and let me be patient about it. But it’s still not the same. And this is also what you very often see in large institutions that the people that are from the supportive position, you know, they think that artists are crazy, of course, I mean, of course, even many people think artists are crazy, but they’re not crazy. They’re just extremely focused, they’re extremely involved in what they’re doing. Because for them, it is everything, I think, and this, of course, means that it may not be easy. And even at the end, you need to sort of find peace, and that everything needs to be great. Because we will work with these people, again, the network is still not as big you will meet the people again, and so on. So it is important to like not to be explosive and to to always, you know, keep the things running, that you can still speak together and be happy about the result of your work. Indeed.

Matthew Dols 45:54
So I’m interested, still about like the role of curating these days. So like, your job is a very unique job. There are not a lot of institutional curators really like in the world, you know, in comparison to like insurance salespeople, whatever, like, you have a very niche thing that you do. And I think it’s great, I think it’s worthwhile and it’s necessary. But you’re, you’re behind this sort of this curtain. And and a lot of us out in the world don’t really know what it is that you you do with and with your job basically like so. You know, your role, of course, you said 80% paperwork, probably 10 10% meetings. But like, when you get to the stuff that you really got into the industry for like, what is it that you still get the opportunity to do? Do you go out and do studio visits? Do you go to exhibitions? Like how do you keep connected with what’s going on, when you actually have so many other responsibilities?

Michael Novotny 47:02
Yeah, I used to work in the newspaper. And we were always wondering how they were working visual knowledge when they were no computers, what they were doing, because, of course, we just work on the computer all the time nowadays. But yes, but less teach to that’s exactly the problem of the time and of the quantification that it is sort of expected, when you add this position that you already have all the knowledge and you already know all the people. And even very often for the actual implementation of the project, like when we did this couldn’t give our religion seven months. And it’s a project that should probably take like two or three years, because that’s fast, you need to get to know that is 220 works on display. So again, just to kind of, you know, to get an idea, you need to really work very closely with the artists, you need to get to know all the works to be able to select the representatives once and so on. And so, but yes, I do have some time, of course, I’m trying at least or I’m still quite often also being invited to go to the sort of densified presentations of art as it’s when it’s being LA or Art Basel Art Fair. Because you can see a lot in a short time there. But again, it’s not so much about any more seeing a lot, but just to get having a kind of idea to to because you if I go to Venice Biennale, for example, last year, I know all the artists that are exhibited there already, I know that at least I know the names, I have a kind of vague idea of what they’re doing where they’re from. So I’m just more kind of pre sizing, my idea of what is the state of the art at this moment. So that’s why I’m also going to see of course, institutional exhibitions. But I’m also following the programs of the museum, just by show we are seeing what they’re showing extra because I don’t need to sometimes specifically go to see the exhibition, because I already know the artists work well. Or I’m if I’m going then I’m just looking how they are approaching the exhibition, what comes to architecture, what comes to the division two chapters are no chapters, two supporting materials, etc, etc. So it is really more of that to just follow of the changes. I think it’s the same if you are a researcher in any field, I studied anthropology and I also I mean, aside other things, and even my teachers they needed just to kind of read quickly a lot of articles in the anthropological in the main anthropological journals to kind of keep track on what’s going on. It would be kind of diagonal reading, you know, very fast reading, just to have an idea of what is the answer. It’s a bit like that in this site. And then of course, I need to focus on some artists that I’m preparing projects and then I need to go very deep here, but I don’t have so much time of doing studio visits anymore.

Matthew Dols 50:00
Now, okay, when it comes to doing your exhibition, so let’s say you have an exhibition that’s been approved by the board, there’s money, all the good stuff. So all all in line and all that, do you as the curator, do the design of it’s like, I’m thinking like down to like wall colors and placements of pieces and stuff, like, what part of what that role is yours and what part it potentially goes to like the designers or some other people on your team.

Michael Novotny 50:29
It depends on the project and on the space. In the previous projects, I was pretty much the architect as well. And I always collaborated with more or less the same graphic design studio that I like and I to work with. In the National Gallery is more like in a theater, in the sense that you have a director, you have actors, but you have also someone who is does the State set, the lightning and so on. And each of these people should have a sort of autonomy, and are all artistic professions. So in a sense, you should not just tell them what to do. But you should let them to sort of decide within some constraints and limits. And this is also why it can be more difficult to work on large scale, because the artist may not like the thing that the architect propose. But I think that actually it is a sort of higher level of civilization, of course, more people work. So it can also be much better, because it’s good that it’s not one person who is doing all that each of the people has their own opinion, or their own vision of the exhibition and their artwork. So it’s edition again, I’m trying not to do that I’m not doing architecture, for example, even though I am really a lot thinking in time, I am not doing exhibitions by putting images, but I’m really imagining and placing the works in space. But I’m really trying to keep some Enter to let some autonomy to the architect to the graphic designer to do this because it can actually finally be better. So let’s say that more or less, I’m placing the pieces with the artist, I’m writing all the texts, of course, and sort of supervising the overall art direction, whether it be the graphic design or the PR or choosing images for the posters or in discussion, of course with the department. So So sort of our director and all the content that comes to text providing,

Matthew Dols 52:30
okay, you just brought up Tet writing text and like I’m a huge I have a huge problem with writing text. I’m horrible at it. So I’m always looking for tips and tricks. So like if you had to give some advice to a younger curator and or a younger artist about how to really sort of craft a well done, let’s say artist statement or something like that. What what kind of tricks do you do? What kind of techniques do you try to work through?

Michael Novotny 53:02
I work in the newspaper when I was young before I started to work as a curator, which was a good school, because when you’re a journalist and I work in a daily newspaper, so every day you need to write a newspaper, again, you’re absolutely there’s absolutely not any consideration that you would even one second think about how you’re writing, all the work of the journalist is just to gather the information. And to put them in a text needs to be kind of spontaneous, there’s absolutely no time to rewrite or rethink it. It’s just natural, right? So it’s, of course, very, it’s a huge pressure, especially working in the daily newspaper. Exactly. Because every day you’re starting from scratch. Not a lot of people manage more than one or two years, because it’s sort of you know, then you move on to the magazines or you move on to the editor. But really the people who are writing the articles, you don’t manage to do this for a long time. So just kind of learn me to write without thinking actually, but of course, to be able to write them thinking that people can also understand that. And then I think it’s really mainly about the quantity again, it’s a sort of muscle if you if you’re using it, it’s easy. If you’re not using it, it gets hard. Since I mean I myself still have problems to understand how can someone writes a 1000 pages book or something like that. I’m not on this level yet to take me anonymous time but, but I can also imagine that if you really do it all your life, then it becomes very easy. And then maybe the advice is like try to use as concrete words as possible, not use the abstract, blah, blah. If you look at any kind of art magazines, and you read them, you will see how repetitive the way it’s being written especially in English is how for example, the three R’s are being used like three words after each other purity virginity. I don’t know something, you know, this kind of, and how many there is like five or six other mechanisms as you’re writing about art that are always the same and repeating themselves. So really like, instead of speaking generically try to speak about the concrete things of an artwork, what it means what the concrete properties and attributes of the artwork, I mean, rather than some very general words.

Matthew Dols 55:28
It’s great. Okay, along that line for you and your practice of writing these texts that you do, how often how many rewrites do you have to do? So you make like you do a rough draft, you do your first down on paper? And then how many times do you have to rewrite it? And do you do you who writes for a living more or less? Do you also like hand it off to other people to get some other criticisms or other feedbacks before it’s finalized?

Michael Novotny 55:56
Depends on the text, some text, I write, and I just read it the day after in the morning, and I send some texts, I rewrite more. Some text, I also work with an editor for a book and so on. But I think that, like, if you managed to gather your thoughts, well, then you should just write it down. Because if you start too much to touch the text, you can also lose the rhythm and the sort of spontaneity of it.

Matthew Dols 56:32
You can overwork it,

Michael Novotny 56:34
you can overwork it. But again, of course, it really depends on which kind of takes if I were opening text for an exhibition, where I have two paragraphs, and I need to really say everything that needs to be super good, then it’s something else. Yeah, those two paragraphs needs to be worked, each word needs to have a reason to be there. But if you’re writing a lot of larger text for a book, 15 norm 29 pages that you can just, you know, reread several times and do some corrections and go,

Matthew Dols 57:06
you also talked earlier on about like the speed of our society, how things are going so fast and things like this. What do you think about the Arts and Social Media and the arts and like online art space, you know, sort of online sales, online exhibitions, all these different kinds of things that are sort of progressing towards that direction.

Michael Novotny 57:29
For sure, it’s changed a lot the face of art. But it didn’t change it entirely. When it was the first coming of the generation of artists working online, a lot of people were predicting all the art will move online, etc. So I would say that it’s more an extension of the reality that still remains reality. I mean, the art, what matters in the artists, still the walls, the sort of hard drive, you know, the museums and so on. And this does not entirely overlap with the attention you get online. Not such a long time ago, we had the so called post internet generation, that was award generation of artists has really sort of changed the face of their work for it to be looking better on photographs. Because of course, we know that, you know, the most of the art we see we see them on pictures, or let’s say you can reach much wider public square images than with the real exhibition. But the attention they get on their social media and so on was not immediately transformed into a commercial success into exhibitions in the museum, it does not go exactly there is some sort of transformation. Right? So it happened but not it, let’s say you cannot just follow the trend. It could be the same. It’s not the same. I still believe in the in the reality. I mean, this is and still again, what you see that is happening is mainly staging exhibitions, and making artworks in real and then transforming them into some documentation. But the reality still exists is just that it’s not going entirely virtual. Oh, yeah, I

Matthew Dols 59:17
had a conversation with a curator where we are talking about having as like an artist having an exhibition these days, I will say in a gallery, that while the attendees of the gallery are great, and the the acts of the exhibition is great, to a certain extent, because of the fact that of social media and things like this, most of the benefits that will come from the exhibition will be the documentation, which will then be put on their website or on their social media because that’s going to reach a much larger audience.

Michael Novotny 59:50
Yes, but this is of course for small galleries or for commercial galleries, where they don’t really are not entirely depend on The actual paper has a National Gallery. Of course we are, yeah, but not even on ticket sales, but also in attendance in a frame that we need to also give those numbers to the Minister of Culture that funds us. And so if nobody will come to our exhibition, they most probably won’t give out the money. While if we have a lot of people come in, and so on. But I mean, it helps, definitely helps. But I would also say that as it’s, it’s, it’s a sort of lubricants that, again, accelerates the wall system and make again, as it allows people to network, we are more transnational, let’s say in some, so it also leads to kind of deeper and further specialization, right? young artists are, you know, of course, nowadays connected with other artists who may live on the other side of the world, but are doing something very specific as they do here. But this also leads to a kind of enclosure. In a sense, that’s the paradox of it, that it gets even more and more specialized. And there is like so little stylistic changes, or little waves that nobody really can perceive only the people who are kind of seeing them real time happening on the social media. So it gets even there further from, from the white public, while contradictory, the social media, of course, were made for the masses.

Matthew Dols 1:01:21
Oh, no, social media ends up just being sort of a self fulfilling prophecy. Like if you like a certain kind of work, you will follow people and befriend people who do the some of the generally similar works. And so the curation of your feed ends up being well, what you are seeing more of what you already like.

Michael Novotny 1:01:42
Yes, but, but again, as I was already actively all kind of started. I also know people that did help a lot. Also, the when the blocks arrived, like specialized blocks, I remember we work that doesn’t exist anymore, which I know artists that really got exhibitions because their work was published there. Because at a certain point, so many people were watching it, because it was kind of easy source material, of course, but that everything, nothing really lasts, everything gets oversaturated very quickly. People are, and again, is nowadays Instagram can be you know, the things that can help some artists, again, the the such amount of content, were so overwhelmed with content that it brings the inflation of it also. Because again, so more and more, you just want to already get to kind of selection from a selection from a selection, because you just don’t have the capacity to go through all that.

Matthew Dols 1:02:41
Well, I feel like there’s also a little bit of pressure to simply be producing more. So like, whether it’s artwork as an artist myself, or like for you as a running institution, like you need to run more get more exhibitions, like if I feel like the sheer volume of what people is beginning to expect of creators to create is rising and rising exponentially.

Michael Novotny 1:03:06
Because everything is like that. I mean, I don’t know, it’s, it’s, it’s the logic of our time now, like you increase production, that’s all we know, in any kind of future work. The increase of production, if you look on the amount of the academic articles writing written is also exponential growth. nobody reads those things. They’re just doing them because they have the cetacean systems that they get money because and so we so everywhere in our society, we don’t know any other way, then the growth, we don’t have any kind of stabilization. And of course, if you’re working with all the older artists like 80, or 90 years old, and you look at the work they did you look at their portfolios, and their CVS and so on, you see that they were doing one exhibition, parry one exhibition every two years, it was totally okay, it was the normal rhythm. Nowadays, my students, if they’re not showing, at least like every three months, they feel like they are not successful. And then again, the paradox that I see at some artists, is also that even if you’re doing something material, you have nowhere to story, because of course, again, the production is so large, that you do need to pay some space, where to store it, and displays nowadays in large cities, of course, it’s very expensive, etc, etc. And you see artists who are 35, my age 40, who already could have a retrospective, because they did so much work in the 15 years, that is comparable to those 8090 years old artists, because the region was much slower.

Matthew Dols 1:04:41
Right, but I mean, but is this good or bad?

Michael Novotny 1:04:44
I mean, it’s again, it’s too complicated. Of course, one would say it’s bad. I mean, but that how to get out of it. We don’t know how to get out of it. Like it’s the rule in all the museums. It’s you do more it’s more success, of course. But somehow it’s alive people we are attracted by it. We want to live in big cities which are dancing population, which are pulsating everything is happening on every meter you see that we’re kind of attracted by that. So I don’t know what is the way out of it?

Matthew Dols 1:05:16
I don’t know either. But that’s why this podcast is called the wise fool. Like, I don’t know the answers to everything, for sure. This has been marvelous. Thank you very much for your time.

Michael Novotny 1:05:27
Thank you as well.

The Wise Fool is produced by Fifty14.
I am your host Matthew Dols – www.matthewdols.com

All information is available in the show notes or on our website www.wisefoolpod.com