The Jewish Museum in Prague has a new director. Pavla Niklová took up the post on July 1, appointed by Museum Trustees for a five-year term. She replaces Leo Pavlat, who has retired after serving as director since 1994, when the museum was returned to the Jewish community.
Niklová has experience at prominent arts organizations in the Czech Republic and in the United States. Her focus is the conception, production, and promotion of innovative programs that encourage multidisciplinary collaboration and exchange. In addition, she has experience in fundraising and public relations.
“The museum represents an extensive collective memory not only of Czech and Moravian Jews but of the whole Central European region. I feel an enormous responsibility and motivation to run the museum as an institution that is based on Jewish traditions but is also welcoming to the general public, and documents contemporary life besides preserving history,” she said in an announcement by the Museum.
With our colleagues at the museum, we will be developing new and inspiring programs that should become one of our core activities, expand the interest of the public, open up new funding opportunities, and attract media attention. We would like the museum to be recognized as an essential part of cultural and social life in Prague.
Niklová previously worked at the Jewish Museum from October 2004 to January 2010, heading the Department of Development and Public Relations and overseeing the museum’s centenary project “A Year with Jewish Culture – 100 Years of the Jewish Museum in Prague.”
The goal of the anniversary celebrations was to present the museum as a unique holding place of Jewish history connected to Czech culture and society. Thanks to this program, the museum established partnerships with a total of one hundred and twenty institutions and participated in events in fifty cities around the world.
From July 2014 to June 2023, she served as Executive Director of the Vaclav Havel Library Foundation in New York.
Over the course of nine years, the Foundation dedicated the bust of Vaclav Havel in the U.S. Capitol on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the Velvet Revolution, established the annual Disturbing the Peace award for dissident writers, and filmed numerous interviews with prominent U.S. politicians, academics, writers and artists. Since 2017, the Foundation has organized the annual Rehearsal for Truth festival of Central European theater at the Bohemian National Hall in Manhattan.