Collections and Archive Department

The ATI launched its work to build a collection in 2006 by registering the collection with the Czech Ministry of Culture’s Central Registry of Collections.

The Collections and Archive Department, which was established as an independent department in 2009, acquires, processes, conserves, and display collected items and archive documents that are connected with the theatre, especially theatre on the territory of the Czech Republic.

The collection focuses on scenography, contains original set and costume designs, maquettes, and other artefacts of artistic significance or of value for theatre history. In addition, it helps process an enormous number of photographs and posters, which are preserved, documented, and digitised. The archives (units that perform documentary work) are separate and organised in conformity with archive methodology and they adhere to a more rigorous research regime.

The department co-organises or organises exhibitions of scenography and photography.

Scenography Colletion

As of 31 December 2009 the Scenography Collection contained 1272 documented items. In 2009 the collection was enriched with the addition of set and costume designs by Josef Svoboda, Jaroslav Malina, Otakar Schindler, Zuzana Štefunková Rusínová, and Andrea Králová. The advisory committee for acquisitions met on 24 March 2009. Alongside its regular agenda it approved the purchase of set designs by Libor Fára under the ISO grant of the Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic, the discussion of grant applications was deferred by the provider until 2010. A portion of the collection’s items have been displayed at exhibitions which the department has helped organise (Legions of Characters – Costume Designs by Jan Skalický, Breaking through the Space, and Variations – Theatre Artists at the Turn of the Millennium). In 2009 work continued on the systematic digitisation of the collection of photographs (with the support of the EEA/Norwegian Financial Mechanisms), and to date more than eighty thousand photographs have been scanned. The scanned photographs are then saved in a photographic database and eventually made available on the web at: www.divadelnifotografie.cz.

Photography Collection

The department manages a large collection of photographs. Theatre photography has a long history in the Czech Republic, and in the second half of the 20th century, thanks to figures like Josef Koudelka and Jaroslav Krejčí, it evolved into a specific art genre and became an interesting ‘export article\. Work began on systematically processing the ATI’s collection of photographs in 2008. The ATI owns approximately 120 000 original photographs, both positives and negatives. Their digitisation and database processing was incorporated into the work on the project Preserving and Presenting the Cultural Heritage of Czech and World Theatre, which was conducted with the support of the EEA/Norwegian Financial Mechanisms. That project generated a unique opportunity to digitise, describe, and grant access to photographs charting the past sixty years of the life of Czech theatres. Work on the digitisation is already successfully under way, and the individual photographs are saved along with basic information on them in the relevant database. Currently more than 80 000 photographs of almost 6000 productions by more than 250 photographers have been scanned and they include shots by Jaroslav Krejčí, Vilém Sochůrek, and Viktor Kronbauer. The photographs are accessible through the internet database at: www.divadelnifotografie.cz.
In 2009 the ATI helped organise the jubilee exhibition of Jaroslav Krejčí at the New Town Hall.

Posters

The collection’s scenographic and photographic artefacts are significantly complemented by the collection’s theatre posters, which provide important testimony of the country’s theatre history. They are also of unquestionable art-historical value and make good exhibition pieces. The posters are currently in the stage of being conserved and catalogued, and to date approximately 1500 posters have been catalogued.

Archive

The Archives were established as an independent department in 2005 for the purpose of maintaining continuity and minimising the partitioning of already existing comprehensive collections of materials into separate collections (People, Productions, Photo-documentation). The archives contain complete sets of items organised according to a different logic than the documentation collections, which relate to individuals, institutions (theatres), and events.

The basic functions of the archives are to gather and select archival materials (acquisitions), ensure their safe storage, record and document them, and make them accessible for scientific and cultural use. The archives gather written, visual, and sound documentation on Czech theatre culture from the distant and more recent past up to the present day. Its work directly ties in with the main collections of the Information and Documentation Department, which are incomplete and constantly being added to, and their informative value is augmented by the completed collections in the Archives. Archival materials are donated, bequeathed, or passed on to the archives – usually they are monuments to artistic work (of individuals or institutions) and usually are not materials of a specifically personal (private) nature. An example of work in this area is the processing of Václav Havel’s collection in cooperation with the Library of Václav Havel. A specialised database was developed that records basic information on the archives’ items and contains a description of the collection and data on the storage and condition of archival materials. The archives’ files (the basic unit of documentation) are thematically divided up in the database into three file groups: People, Theatre, Miscellanea (e.g., theatre events, festivals, realia). The archives’ collections mainly cover the second half of the 20th century.

The most important collections include:

People (the collections of Vlastimil Brodský, Václav Havel, Petr Lébl, Luboš Pistorius, and the most recent edition is the large collection inherited from the director and artist Ota Ševčík).
Theatres (the collections of Theatre on Řeznická Street, Kladivadlo Theatre in Ústí nad Labem, Comedy Theatre Prague /1994–2001/, Prague Chamber Ballet, Semafor I, Semafor II, Village Theatre)
Varia (the collections ‘November 1989 at the Theatre Institute’ – the collection relates to the events during the Velvet Revolution; the Administrative Archive for the Prague Quadrennial from 1967 to the present – the archiving of photo-documentation and stage designs stored in the Information and Documentation and in collections; Recording of the Discussion on the Preamble of the National Theatre in Prague on 7. 6. 2007).
Oral history (the Lída Myšáková Paulová collection – a 2006 recording of the memoirs of the recently deceased dancer, teacher and choreographer)

The archive helps in the organisation of exhibitions. For instance, it loaned materials to the exhibition ‘Citizen Havel/Václav Havel in a Changing Europe’, which was held in Berlin in 2007. Each year a staff member of the archive takes part in a conference held in the National Archives in Prague: ‘Archives, Libraries, and Museums in a Digital World’, devoted to the issue of cooperation between archives, libraries, museums, galleries, and heritage conservation institutions in the use of information and communication technologies for the conservation of cultural heritage and its public accessibility.

Collections and Archive Department

Scenography Colletion

Photography Collection

Posters

Archive

The most important collections include:

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