The exhibition is being held in cooperation with the National Gallery in Prague to mark the 125th anniversary of the founding of the predecessor of what is today the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic. Visitors to the exhibition will for the first time have the opportunity to acquaint themselves with a collection of works whose quality is indicated by the names of their creators, which include Vojtěch Hynais, Josef Václav Myslbek, František Kupka, Vojtěch Preissig, and also Antonín Dvořák and the poet Jaroslav Vrchlický.
A publication to accompany the exhibition contains illustrations of all the works that were awarded prizes and also several essays. The art historian Taťána Petrasová writes on “Connections between academic disciplines. The visual arts prizes awarded by the Czech Academy of Sciences and Arts.” The literary historian Kateřina Piorecká from the Institute of Czech Literature of the Czech Academy of Sciences, in her text entitled “Voucher for Immortality. The literary prizes awarded by the Czech Academy of Sciences and Arts” explains the “economy of prestige” (to use J.F. English’s phrase) of literary events and the application of control over cultural economics, related to Pierre Boudieu’s term “symbolic capital”. The musicologist Jarmila Procházka from the Institute of Ethnology of the Czech Academy of Sciences provides a useful survey of the figures involved in the musical prizes awarded by the Academy. An invaluable feature of the catalogue are lists of the artists who received prizes and of the officials of the Fourth Class of the Czech Academy of Sciences and Arts, prepared by Veronika Hulíková from the National Gallery in Prague and Vlasta Mádlová from the Masaryk Institute and Archive of the Czech Academy of Sciences.