New Alphonse Mucha Museum to Open in Prague

Early next year, a new museum dedicated to Alphonse Mucha is set to open its doors in Prague. The new institution follows an extensive palace renovation in the city center—as well as some controversy surrounding the display of Mucha’s art in the Czech Republic.

The name Alphonse Mucha has long been synonymous with the term Art Nouveau. The turn-of-the-century Czech artist popularized the aesthetic with his distinctively decorative poster designs. To preserve Mucha’s lasting legacy in his homeland, a brand-new museum is opening in January of 2025 in Savarin Palace, a newly-renovated Baroque building in Prague’s city center. The museum, which occupies over 12,000 square feet of the palace, will house an expansive permanent collection of Alphonse Mucha’s works. It is the result of a new collaboration between the Mucha Foundation and Prague-based real estate developers Crestyl.

According to a recent statement from the museum’s directors, a debut exhibition will accompany the new institution’s grand opening. The exhibition “will present previously unexhibited works, including early oil paintings, hand-drawn studies for decorative documents, items exploring Mucha’s fascination with Freemasonry, and study materials for The Slav Epic.“

Will Mucha’s Slav Epic Join the New Collection?

Alphonse Mucha was best known for his theatrical posters and commercial advertising designs. However, he was also keen to assert himself as a fine artist. Mucha’s late-career series The Slav Epic did just that, depicting key events from the history of the Slavic people across 20 monumental paintings on canvas. Mucha and Charles Crane, the American philanthropist who funded The Slav Epic, bequeathed the series of paintings to the city of Prague in 1928, the tenth anniversary of Czechoslovakia’s independence.

Mucha’s gift was conditional upon the city providing a permanent exhibition space for the paintings. Controversially, such a venue has yet to be constructed nearly 100 years later, and The Slav Epic remains at the center of disputes over its exhibition and ownership. The new museum hopes that The Slav Epic might finally find its permanent home in Savarin Palace. Marcus Mucha, great-grandson of the artist and director of the Mucha Foundation, said that “a number of negotiations are ongoing” with the city of Prague regarding this aim.

The new Mucha institution is located near Prague’s first Mucha Museum on Pánská Street, which opened in 1998. The Mucha Foundation ended its long-term agreement with the first museum earlier this year. The Pánská Street institution is still operating, with several pieces from former tennis star Ivan Lendl’s renowned collection of Mucha’s work currently on view. However, the new institution in Savarin Palace is positioning itself as “the only official museum dedicated to the Czech artist,” according to its website. Marcus Mucha explained the foundation’s reasons for opening a new Mucha Museum in Prague. “The existing premises were very crowded, especially in the summer,” he said. “We were looking for a new place to enable as many people as possible to admire Mucha’s work. We want the new location of our collections to attract not only tourists, but also Czechs, and become a popular place for them.”