One of the ways in which members of modern society express themselves is by collecting fine art. The cosmos of their burgeoning collection conveys their passions, pursuits, and opinions on what is good, high-quality, meaningful and beautiful. We can think of collection-building as an open and dynamic process with an unknown endpoint, because as the collection grows, so does the collector’s knowledge and experience, and the future of the collection is slowly reshaped.

Exhibition Forgotten Masters. The Changing Nature of Artistic Success presents the works of ten painters who came last in a visitor poll held as part of the exhibition The Search for a Masterpiece (8 October 2023 –26 May 2024) and who have long been overlooked by art history. In recent decades, there have been very few, if any, exhibitions or monographs on them.

Hradec Králové’s Velké náměstí (Great Square) is currently dominated by cars. This large parking area in the historic city centre has been the scene of clashing opinions regarding the square’s current and future use. On the one hand are voices in favour of preserving parking and in support of car traffic, while on the other hand there is an interest in designing public space for people and their daily activities. Czech society has generally cherished its cars and placed them on an untouchable pedestal, but there is currently debate throughout the country as to whether public space should be more accommodating to people or to cars.

The Cabinet of Curiosities section of the exhibition How to Collect Art: The Karel Tutsch Story introduces visitors to Karel Tutsch’s early collecting activities through a set of ex libris – a collection of small-scale applied graphic art. From here, Tutsch’s interests logically expanded to include fine art prints. Over time, the Cabinet of Curiosities will present various artists and their works on paper that form an indispensable part of the collection.

The concept of the historically focused collection exhibition How to Collect Art: the Karel Tutsch Story will be expanded by a series of exhibitions of the youngest generation of artists, current students or graduates from art school studios. In this way, the curators will revive Tutsch’s basic strategy of discovering and presenting the works of previously unknown artists in a new context. Gallery Na bidýlku II will thus become a laboratory for new approaches to the traditional medium of painting and installation, whose transformations Tutsch has followed and supported for several decades.

Presented in the form of an open depository, the exhibition Vladimír Preclík’s Gift to the Hradec Králové Region includes all the works from a collection donated by the sculptor Vladimír Preclík (fifty-four works in total), supplemented by other works from the collection of the Gallery of Modern Art in Hradec Králové.

The exhibition at GMU’s White Cube takes a unique look at the changing face of Hradec Králové between 1954 and 1984 through photographs taken by two local personalities – Zdeněk Merta (b. 1955) and, to a lesser extent, his father Jan (1927–2022). The exhibited black-and-white photographs represent only a fraction of the family’s extensive archive, with the last images dating to 1984, the year Zdeněk moved to Prague.

The Gallery of Modern Art in Hradec Králové presents two exhibitions by artist Matěj Smetana (b. 1980), organized as part of the city’s celebration of the 800th anniversary of its founding. The first, titled We Are the World (2008–2015), consists of flags installed in various public places around the city. The second, Moonlight Sonata (2025), can be seen in the gallery’s Black Cube exhibition space. In addition, at the exhibition opening the artist will present a performance titled Moonlight Sonata.

Human Frontiers, the final presentation of an eponymous project, consists of a uniform compact object designed especially for the entry area of the Gallery of Modern Art in Hradec Králové. The installation is a group portrait compiled from individual contributions by various students from the University Hradec Králové’s Department of Art, Visual Culture, and Textile Studies who participated in this research project.