The Prague Jewish Museum was honored in the 2020 Gloria Musaealis National Museum Competition for its reconstruction of the Spanish Synagogue and the new permanent exhibition housed there
The museum received a Special Award in the category “Museum Achievement of the Year.” It was rated one of the six top museums in the category, out of 25 entries. The awards were presented at a ceremony June 17.
The competition is organized jointly by the Czech Ministry of Culture, the Association of Museums and Galleries in the Czech Republic, and the Czech Committee of the International Council of Museums (ICOM).
“We are very pleased that the jury appreciated our reconstruction of the Spanish Synagogue and our new exhibition,” museum director Leo Pavlát said in a press release.
It is also of great satisfaction for us, in particular because most of the work on this project took place during the pandemic, which caused a severe drop in income for the museum. Although the Jewish Museum is a non-state institution which must rely on its own resources in order to fully secure its operations, we managed – even at a time of financial losses – to complete this costly project in accordance with our original objective, so that our visitors can now enjoy it.
After being closed to the public for 18 months, the Spanish Synagogue reopened to the public December 16 with its expanded premises and newly designed permanent exhibition that uses audio-visual material and interactive technology.
Costs of the project amounted to “several tens of millions of crowns,” the museum said. The reconstructiom provided an additional 600 square metres of exhibition space with barrier-free access to the upper floor gallery area.
The new permanent exhibition, called “Jews in the Czech Lands in the 19th–20th Centuries,”. focuses on Jewish history during those centuries and builds on and replaces the previous exhibit, which dated from 1998.
It includes “unique pieces of Judaica and other objects, documents, films and photographs ,” Pavlat said.
In addition, the exhibition includes audiovisual and interactive elements, which have been installed with full respect to the unique space of the synagogue. An important new feature of the exhibition is the attention it pays to the history of the Jews between 1945 and 1989, as well as the subsequent period. This previously neglected chapter of recent Czech history will be of particular interest to local visitors.
The Spanish Synagogue was built in 1868 for the local Reform congregation on the site of the 12th-century Altschul (Old Shul). It is called “Spanish” because of its elaborate Moorish interior design, influenced by the Alhambra. The building was designed by Josef Niklas and Jan Bělský, the sumptuous interior (from 1882–83) by Antonín Baum and Bedřich Münzberger.
During WW2, the Nazi occupiers used it as a warehouse for confiscated synagogue items from Czech Jewish communities. The Jewish Museum, then run by the communist state, acquired it in 1955. The Jewish Museum, originally founded in 1906, was returned to Jewish ownership and administration in 1994.
The Museum has been going through a process of overhauling its permanent exhibits, which are housed in former synagogues. The work on the Spanish Synagogue is the fourth revitalization project in this process. Earlier work included the renovation of the Pinkas Synagogue (2018) and Maisel Synagogue (2015) and the opening of the Information and Reservation Centre (2014). In addition, landscaping the paths in the Old Jewish Cemetery was carried out in 2013.