Museum In Prague Research Articles

Spectacles and Embroidered Spectacle Cases from China in the Náprstek Museum

Abstract Spectacles from China appear in many museum collections, and they are popular collectibles in private collections. The collection of ten spectacles and their cases in the Náprstek Museum in Prague shows its technological and material development from the pince-nez type in the second half of the 19th century to early 20th century tortoiseshell and plastic spectacles. As signs of learning, these different types of spectacles and their cases show their social context and meaning in Chinese society during the transition period from the traditional to the modern era.

An isotopic case study of individuals with syphilis from the pathological-anatomical reference collection of the national museum in Prague (Czech Republic, 19th century A.D.)

ObjectiveThis paper aims at investigating the possible existence of isotopic offsets in δ13Ccol and δ15Ncol values in relation to tertiary syphilis. MaterialBased on materials from the 19th c. A.D. deriving from the pathological-anatomical reference collection (the Jedlička collection) of the National Museum in Prague (Czech Republic), a comparative approach of ten individuals with syphilis and nine without the disease was undertaken. MethodsBone powder samples were defatted according to the protocol of Liden et al. (1995). Bone collagen was extracted following the protocol of Bocherens et al. (1991). ResultsOur results show that individuals with syphilis have lower δ13Ccol values than individuals without the disease; the observed difference between the two groups is about 0.3-0.4‰, which is relatively small but still meaningful. However, no difference between δ15Ncol values of the two groups has been noticed. ConclusionsEither diets prescribed by physicians to syphilitic patients or nutritional stress caused by cyclic appetite disturbance due to the disease itself or the administered medical treatment appeared to be possible explanations of the observed isotopic pattern. Overall, the response of the two isotopic proxies could argue for relatively limited nutritional restrictions. SignificanceThis is the first study examining bone collagen isotopic response to syphilis based on clinically documented human skeletal materials. LimitationsThe sample sizes are relatively small and cautiousness must be taken regarding the interpretations of the data. Suggestions for further researchCompound-specific stable isotope investigations and analysis of mercury content could be helpful to better understand the observed isotopic effects.

Pohřby kultury se šňůrovou keramikou z Prahy-Ruzyně

One grave of Corded Ware Culture was excavated in the course of the rescue excavation by the City of Prague Museum in Prague-Ruzyně in 1999. In the isolated grave lay two burials: adult man and child inhumations. The grave also contained pottery and unspecified animal bones. Analysis of assemblage put this grave in the find-group III. AMS data of adult human remains confirm the years between 3981 ± 22 BP.

Gottfried Lindauer and the Náprstek Museum: Ethnographic Collection

Gottfried Lindauer was a Bohemian painter residing and working in Aotearoa New Zealand. His paintings capturing the native people and their life earned him praise and respect from the Māori and Pākehā alike, as well as international recognition within and outside the artistic community. The Náprstek Museum in Prague owns two of his paintings, a small collection of Maori objects, photographs and letters to Ms Josefa Náprstková. This set of resources offers a comprehensive view on the artist’s collection practices, his creative process, and last but not least his relation to the Náprstek family.

Vzácná varianta republikánského denáru typu RRC 222/1 / A rare variety of the Roman Republican denarius of the RRC 222/1 type

An extremely rare variety of the Roman Republican denarius of the RRC 222/1 type has been identified recently in the numismatic collection of the National Museum in Prague. The article analyses its iconography in a broader context of the Greek and Roman coinages as well as other visual art styles emphasising importance of consistent differentiation between the goddesses Diana and Luna that are frequently confused one with another even in the scholarly literature.

Med. Dr. Adalbert Wraný (1836–1902) – doctor of medicine, mineral collector and donor to the National Museum in Prague

Adalbert Wraný (*1836, †1902) was a doctor of medicine, with his primary specialization in pediatric pathology, and was also one of the founders of microscopic and chemical diagnostics. He was interested in natural sciences, chemistry, botany, paleontology and above all mineralogy. He wrote two books, one on the development of mineralogical research in Bohemia (1896), and the other on the history of industrial chemistry in Bohemia (1902). Wraný also assembled several natural science collections. During his lifetime, he gave to the National Museum large collections of rocks, a collection of cut precious stones and his library. He donated a collection of fossils to the Geological Institute of the Czech University (now Charles University). He was an inspector of the mineralogical collection of the National Museum. After his death, he bequeathed to the National Museum his collection of minerals and the rest of the gemstone collection. He donated paintings to the Prague City Museum, and other property to the Klar Institute of the Blind in Prague. The National Museum’s collection currently contains 4 325 samples of minerals, as well as 21 meteorites and several hundred cut precious stones from Wraný’s collection.

The Correspondence of Bohuslav Martinů with Josef Munclinger and his Comments on the Stage Direction of the Four-Part Opera Hry o Marii in the Collections of the National Museum

Abstract The collections of the Theatre Department at the National Museum in Prague contain a set of sources that allow us to see how Bohuslav Martinů participated in preparing productions of his stage works. This is a collection of the composer’s correspondence and comments on stage direction written on the occasion of the first Prague performance of the four-part opera Hry o Marii (The Plays of Mary), H 236 in 1936. The text publishes full transcripts of all of these sources with critical commentary. This involves two letters from Bohuslav Martinů addressed to Josef Munclinger, one letter from the management of the National Theatre in Prague to Bohuslav Martinů, and two lists of the composer’s comments on stage direction.

Julia Hufnagel-Schildbach (1880–1962) – the most significant woman – collector of minerals in Bohemia and her collection at the National Museum in Prague

Julia H. Schildbach (*1880, †1962) from Marienbad (Mariánské Lázně) built around 1900–1935 an extensive systematic collection of minerals. Minerals were bought, exchanged and personally collected at localities in the wide vicinity of Mariánské Lázně. She had extensive contacts with collectors of minerals in Bohemia and Germany and professional mineralogists in Austria and Bohemia, including mineralogists from the National Museum in Prague. After the end of World War II, she was not evicted as a German from Marienbad, unlike other German inhabitants, but lived in her home town until she died. However, her collection of minerals was confiscated by the state after the war. The larger part of the collection has been transferred to the National Museum in Prague, where 2716 items of minerals from the collection of J. Schildbach are registered, and part of the collection has been transferred to the Municipal Museum in Mariánské Lázně.

Ludwig Mayer, a prominent collector of minerals and his collection in the National Museum in Prague

Ludwig Mayer (*1879, †?) was an significant collector of minerals from Bílina near Teplice. He personally searched minerals in terrain. He also purchased large amount of minerals from dealers or exchanged with other collectors. He deserved a number of interesting or completely new mineralogical findings, which were enriching the overall knowledge of mineralogical conditions of the Bohemian Central Highlands. Many of his findings were published by profesor Josef Emanuel Hibsch (*1852, †1940), the greatest expert on geological conditions of the Bohemian Central Highlands. From 1939 to 1945 Mayer was the manager of geological collections of the museum in Teplice. A total of 596 pieces of minerals from the Mayer’s collection came to the systematic part of the mineralogical collection of the National Museum in Prague. The core of this amount consists of documentary valuable minerals from several important mineralogical sites of the Central Bohemian Highlands, such as Dolní Zálezly, Církvice, Mariánská Rock in Ústí nad Labem, Radejčín and new site Chudoslavice with yellow crystals of chabazite, discovered by Mayer. A total of 54 samples of minerals from the Mayer collection were selected for the newly prepared permanent exhibition of minerals of the National Museum in Prague.

Konference Aktuální trendy v muzejní prezentaci a edukaci II. : vliv digitálních technologií na dětského návštěvníka a mezioborové přesahy muzejní pedagogiky

In the space of castle area of City Museum in Prague the conference Actual trends in museum presentation and education was held in the term 21–22 May 2018, as the second year of the conference of the Committee for museum public relations and museum pedagogy by Czech Association of Museums and Galleries. Conference subtitle for 2018 was Influence of digital technologies on child visitor and interdisciplinary relations of museum pedagogy. The conference was held under partonage of ambassador of Denmark Ole Frijs-Madsen. The conference was co-organised by Department of Archeology nad Museology, Centre of Museology at Masaryk University, Brno with West Bohemian Museum in Plzeň, Masaryk museum in Hodonin and Methodical centre of museum pedagogy. About 120 participants, museums workers, academics and students from the Czech republic and Slovakia took part at the conference.

Two rare spider species (Araneae: Araneidae, Theridiidae) found in the Šumava Mts.

Abstract During an arachnological survey in the Šumava National Park in 2016, two very rare spider species were discovered: Araneus saevus (Araneidae) was recorded for the second time, 45 years after its first report in the Czech Republic. The species is therefore no longer regionally extinct, and can be considered critically endangered. Theridion boesenbergi (Theridiidae) was recorded for the first time in the Šumava Mts. Ecological characterisation of the species is improved, being more psychrophilous than was previously expected. Almost all collected specimens of both species from the Czech Republic are deposited in the National Museum in Prague.

Exiled Russian and Ukrainian Artists in Prague during the Interwar Period

Abstract Through several examples of the representation of Russian art in the milieu of interwar Czechoslovakia, the article shows the specificity of the local Russian cultural community which was exiled there following the October Revolution and the ensuing civil war. It examines the community’s international contacts and the role its strong institutional background played in establishing several art collections—most importantly at the Slavonic Institute and the Russian Cultural-Historical Museum in Prague—as it attempted to capture and preserve for the future the art production of Russian artists abroad. It also looks at a remarkable artistic strategy used by The Scythians artist group, which was based on an alleged otherness and even exoticism of the Russian artists residing in Prague and drew on the ideology of Eurasianism promoted in the Russian exiled community of the period.

Jan Vilém Helfer's (1810–1840) collections from India, the Andaman Archipelago and Burma

Between 1836 and 1840, Jan Vilém Helfer collected thousands of insects, birds and plants in Burma, the Andaman Islands and the Mergui Archipelago, with many first records from these regions. His botanical specimens are preserved in Prague, Kew, Calcutta and many other herbaria. Yet no account has been published of his itinerary, and the volume of his collections has not previously been appreciated. We bring together the available data on Helfer, reconstruct his itinerary and the two routes by which his plants were distributed, and explain the different numbering systems used on the labels of Helfer's duplicates. Based on what his widow transferred to the Czech National Museum in Prague, Helfer collected almost 48,000 beetles, 609 bird skins, 14 mammal skins, 508 Lepidoptera, and 6,086 herbarium specimens or collections. His diaries and his wife's account of their travels have allowed us to reconstruct his itinerary, and we have generated new labels for 305 collections, most of which have two or three duplicates. Helfer's Burmese and Andaman herbarium contains some of the first records of economically important plants in which he was particularly interested.

The Shoah in Poland in the Work of Jiří Weil: Translations and Literary Reference*

Jiří Weil (1900–1959) is currently associated in particular with novel-writing. His works Moskva- -hranice (Moscow to the Border), Život s hvězdou (Life with a Star) and Na střeše je Mendelssohn (Mendelssohn is on the Roof) has been translated into several world languages. Jiří Weil was also a journalist, a researcher at the Jewish Museum in Prague and a translator. This study The Shoah in Poland in the work of Jiří Weil focuses on his translations of Polish poets and his literary work dealing with the Shoah and set in postwar Poland, Warsaw, Łódź and Auschwitz.

The Czech and Slovak emigration to Argentina in the Archive of the Náprstek Museum in Prague

This article aims to provide information about archive sources relating to the Czech emigration to Argentina held in the Náprstek Museum in Prague. The study provides a detailed inventory of the material found in the Náprstek emigrants’ records. The material documents the activities of the Czechs and Slovak emigrants and their organization in Argentina, as well as the agenda of the Czechoslovak institutions dealing with the emigration issue. This material includes compatriot newspapers, correspondence and manuscripts of compatriot organizations, written and oral memories of the emigrants and their descendants. The unique material includes chronicles of several compatriots associations in Buenos Aires, travel memoirs of the Czech traveler Čech-Vyšata and the writings of Jan Purkrábek and Juan Jetmar. The Museum also preserves an extensive photographic record of Czech and Slovak emigration centers in Argentina covering the period from 1907 to 2014.

Data Infrastructure for Scientific and Collections Data in Medium Size Institution

We in the National Museum in Prague were recently faced with a difficult decision. The question was how to build up optimal and economical infrastructure to store and back up our scientific and collections data, which currently requires approximately 150 TB of data storage and is growing constantly. In addition to the infrastructure it was also important to consider a potential LTP (Long Term Preservation) solution. We would like to share our experience and maybe inspire you with our model. The infrastructure model can be defined by four main elements: visualisation of the data infrastructure, virtual platform, back-up and LTP. The visualisation is done by constantly updating a data schema that shows the data stores and their connections with virtual platforms. Every data store has a defined data structure. For example data storage for collections data reflects their physical structure, location and distribution. So it creates a virtual collections depository divided in collections and sub-collections on various levels. For our virtualisation platform we chose the solution by VMware. This platform creates a data space from high speed local data stores. This space is used for various database systems in the museum, e.g. for collections management. Those database systems are connected with large capacity lower speed data stores. The infrastructure is designed to guarantee fast access to the databases and metadata with lower requirements for a storage capacity. The access to the digitised master files (images etc.) is indeed a bit slower due to the lower speed large capacity storage volumes. The back-up strategy has two options. We are using for the virtualisation platform and virtual machines VEEAM back-up system, which works on the basis of reverse incremental backup. The images of virtual machines are backed up on external data storage in a data centre (hosted by third party). The back-up of large capacity lower speed data stores is done by incremental back up to directly connected external data stores. The external data storage in the data centre is replicated in two separate geographical locations. For the future we are planning an LTP strategy for data and also metadata. The best technology at the moment with high capacity, reasonable price, and a long preservation (more than 100 years) is an Optical Disc Archive (ODA). One of the advantages of this technology is the lack of special requirements for temperature, humidity, etc., as well as economical space requirements. The whole system with the LTP solution and technical descriptions will be described as a schema on the poster.

Characterization of Two Historic Smallpox Specimens from a Czech Museum.

Although smallpox has been known for centuries, the oldest available variola virus strains were isolated in the early 1940s. At that time, large regions of the world were already smallpox-free. Therefore, genetic information of these strains can represent only the very last fraction of a long evolutionary process. Based on the genomes of 48 strains, two clades are differentiated: Clade 1 includes variants of variola major, and clade 2 includes West African and variola minor (Alastrim) strains. Recently, the genome of an almost 400-year-old Lithuanian mummy was determined, which fell basal to all currently sequenced strains of variola virus on phylogenetic trees. Here, we determined two complete variola virus genomes from human tissues kept in a museum in Prague dating back 60 and 160 years, respectively. Moreover, mass spectrometry-based proteomic, chemical, and microscopic examinations were performed. The 60-year-old specimen was most likely an importation from India, a country with endemic smallpox at that time. The genome of the 160-year-old specimen is related to clade 2 West African and variola minor strains. This sequence likely represents a new endemic European variant of variola virus circulating in the midst of the 19th century in Europe.

Neolycaena (Rhymnaria) arcana sp. nov. from Tibet (Lepidoptera: Lycaenidae)

Abstract Neolycaena (Rhymnaria) arcana sp. nov. (Lepidoptera: Lycaenidae: Theclinae: Eumaeini) was discovered in an old collection of Lepidoptera in the National Museum in Prague and subsequently described from one male. This specimen undoubtedly originates from the period before 1950, and its label contains only ‘Tibet’. The new species is morphologically similar to other taxa of the subgenus Rhymnaria Zhdanko, 1983 from which it clearly differs in the arrangement of dots on the underside of hindwings as well as in characters of male genitalia. Photos of the holotype and its genitalia are given.

Theory as a Platform for the Education of Museum Staff. Development of the Centre for the Study of Museology in the Years 1967–1982

AbstractThe aim of the presented study is to bring together almost fifteen years of the Centre for the Study of Museology of the Charles University’s Faculty of the Arts at the National Museum in Prague (herein - after referred to as the Centre), one of the most important contemporary methodological and educational centres in the field of museology. The subject of interest will gradually become an analysis of the factors and phenomena that led to its establishment in 1967, including the theoretical concept of the head of the Centre, Jiří Neustupný, which became the starting point for the final form of its curriculum. In addition to outlining the structure for the curriculum for the students of Charles University’s daily study and for the museum staff and introducing personalities who have participated in educational activities, the text also deals with its non-teaching activities (such as research and methodological activities, cooperation within both the domestic and the international museum organisations, while collecting and publishing museological literature). The work was created to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the museological centre which is recognised by international authorities and, as the first one, this work seeks to map its development.

Neolitické a časně eneolitické hroby z Prahy-Jihozápadního Města

In the course of rescue archeological excavation of the City of Prague Museum in the years 1978–1987 were in multicultural site Jihozápadní Město five graves from the Late Neolithic and the Early Eneolithic uncovered. Three inhumation graves with ceramic, chipped industry and polished industry belonged to the late phase of Stroked Pottery Culture. Two cremation graves with ceramic and one of them also with chipped industry are dated to Early Jordanów Culture.