This week I began my second summer working at the National Czech and Slovak Museum, albeit from home. For the weeks leading up to the museum’s reopening, I will be researching into the lives of the artists featured in the NCSML’s Artists as Activists exhibit.
The first artist on my list is Czech multimedia sculptor David Černý. Černý is most famous for his 1991 Pink Tank. Covering a Soviet tank that memorialized the “liberation” of Prague after WWII in a thick coat of bubblegum pink paint jumpstarted Černý’s career in protest art. Černý soon found himself funded to take residencies in Switzerland and the US through the last decade of the 20thcentury.
Černý’s 1997 life-size Hanging Man sculpture of Sigmund Freud gave him a name across the world as it traveled between Prague, Stockholm, Chicago, Grand Rapids, and Seoul. The statue, who dangles precariously by one arm over busy city streets, has frequently incited panic in passerby who fear it is a real man intending to commit suicide.
Never faltering in relevancy or controversy, Černý returned to Prauge with the Jindřich Chalupecký Award for the most promising Czech artist under 35 in the year 2000. This same year, he released an army of 8.5’ tall fiberglass Babies in the city, positioning 10 of them to “climb” the eyesore Žižkov Television Tower. More recently, Černý’s Babies have crossed the ocean to Palm Springs where they currently prowl the sand, eyeing visitors with their barcode faces, a statement to the technological generations of the 21st century.
The most controversial of Černý’s works is Entropa, a giant multimedia creation depicting each nation of the European Union in 2009. In a hoax leading up to Entropa’s unveiling, Černý claimed he had collaborated on this piece with artists from each country, when in reality he had masterminded the entire piece, complete with questionable stereotypes depicting each country. A detailed description of each of the designs can be viewed here.
These four pieces are just a taste of Černý’s notorious portfolio. The NCSML will host two of Černý’s artworks this summer. I look forward to discussing Černý’s aggressive artwork with the public.
Nights at the Museum 
We’re so excited to have you interning at the NCSML this summer!
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