(Prague, April 2009) Only once a year you need not restrict your visiting hours at museums and galleries. During museum night, otherwise quiet buildings fill up with thousands of inquisitive visitors and the entire city comes to life with their comings and goings between individual exhibitions. On 16 May 2009, the Czech Republic together with another 40 countries participates in the project European Museum Nights. If you don’t catch this part of the programme, don’t worry. On 20 June 2009, Prague’s museums also will invert night and day.
A visit to Brno during the museum night is a truly splendid idea, as this event over several years has become one of the city’s most successful cultural projects. Statistically, when factoring in the city’s population and the number of participating institutions, the Brno project is actually the most successful in the world! On 16 May 2009 at the stroke of 6 p.m., the doors of 16 sites, including museums, galleries and a planetarium, will open and remain so until they close behind the final visitor as late as midnight. Special free-of-charge city transport lines will provide connections to more distant locations in the outskirts of Brno.The supporting events interestingly correspond with the actual exhibits and locations. At the Baroque Governor’s Palace, the group Lucrezia Borgia will perform, while the hip-hop group Čokovoko once again will supplement the exhibition of contemporary art at Pražák Palace. Once known as a “prison of nations”, during museum night Castle Špilberk will host a Baroque celebration with jugglers, swordsmen, fire shows and musicians. You can observe this unusual swarm of night-time Brno from the lookout tower of the Old Town Hall or once again gaze at the cosmic events in the night sky at The Nicholas Copernicus Observatory and Planetarium.
The Prague Museum Night each year offers a great many people an unusual challenge: how many sites can they manage to visit in a single evening? This year they can choose from over 50 sites made accessible by 25 institutions. The cultural marathon will start on 20 June at 7 p.m. and will push on until 1 a.m. the morning of 21 June. The National Theatre, Ecotechnical Museum and Municipal Library will be making their Museum Night premieres in 2009.
The Prague Museum Night attracts people not only for the sightseeing outside of normal opening hours but especially for its accompanying events. This year, these include, for example, film and theatre shows, dance and music performances, as well as presentations of unique and curious collections. At the National Museum, people will enjoy the Night of Traditional Crafts, Night of Folklore and the eerie Night of Prague Ghosts. Visitors to the Náprstek Museum will hear a concert of African drumming, while at the Czech Museum of Music an experimental melodrama ominously entitled “The Hangman” will be performed for guests.
Special busses of the Prague Public Transport Company will travel between individual locations. Another appealing aspect of the event is that admission to these attractive sites is only a small token fee or even entirely free.
Other venues of the Museum Night Festival in the Czech Republic:
Kutná Hora (22. 5. 2009)
Chodovar (19. 6. 2009)
Olomouc (5. 6. 2009)
Plzeň (19. 6. 2009)
