Collecting Activities for the National Museum
Activities of the Central Acquisition Advisory Committee
In 2020, the Central Advisory Board for the Collecting Activities of the National Museum (CABCA NM) discussed 38 proposals for the purchase of collection items or sets of items in the total proposed amount of approx. CZK 53 million.
In terms of content, the purchase of all 104 proposed acquisitions was approved, but due to the limited resources of the National Museum, it was not possible to realize all purchases, and therefore some were postponed to 2020.
The 2nd part of the Mnislav Zelený ethnographic collection for the Náprstek Museum and a letter from Bedřich Smetana to Franz Liszt for the Czech Museum of Music were purchased from the ISO/C subsidy program of the Ministry of Culture.
In 2020, most proposals for acquisitions were financed from the budget of the subsidy for the construction of new permanent exhibitions of the National Museum, where these funds for acquisitions were drawn by the Natural History and Historical Museums.
Newly acquired equipment and restoration from the ISO/D subsidy
In the calendar year 2020, the ISO/D program of the Ministry of Culture covered the restoration of collection items for all collection departments of the National Museum, namely the restoration of a set of theatrical costumes from Kačina Castle - 3rd stage for the Historical Museum, preparation of a set of 10,000 herbarium items of the botanical sub-collection for the Natural History Museum, restoration of the valuable library of Olga Scheinpflugová and Karel Čapek for the Library of the National Museum, restoration of the Baluchari sari for the Náprstek Museum and restoration of a set of 3 volumes of the score autograph of the opera Jacobin op. 84 by Antonín Dvořák for the Czech Museum of Music.
Inventory
In 2020, the collection of the National Museum was being inventoried in two concurrent cycles - the original cycle I, which began in 2003; and cycle II, which began in 2015, in which small-scale sub-collections, whose inventory was already finished in cycle I, were inventoried. In 2020, 153,657 items were inventoried in the first inventory cycle (4.41 % of the National Museum’s collection) and 11,821 items in the second inventory cycle (0.34 % of the National Museum’s collection). In total, 165,478 collection items were inventoried in both inventory cycles, i.e. 4.75 % of the whole collection of the National Museum.
General revision
In 2020, based on the order from GD No. 8/2020, an internal inspection was carried out in the 24th sub-collection – other - Collection of Musical Instruments in the Czech Museum of Music and in the depository in Litoměřice. Furthermore, an internal inspection took place in the 24th sub-collection Entomological in Horní Počernice.
During 2020, an in-depth inspection took place in the mineralogical sub-collection in the depository of the Natural History Museum in Horní Počernice. The in-depth inspection of the mineralogical sub-collection should continue with the same frequency of four inspections per year in the following year; the duration of the inspection was extended at the request of the Mineralogy Department due to the high number of stored items.
Due to the current and ongoing pandemic situation, further revisions were temporarily suspended.