Statement of tAFAD regarding the removal of Denisa Lehocká's artwork in the Slovak National Gallery (SNG)

Denisa Lehocká graduated in the 1990s from the Department of Painting at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Bratislava and is today regarded as an internationally respected visual artist.  A monumental yet remarkably delicate installation expresses the artist’s relationship to the Slovak landscape and guides visitors on a path toward building a relationship with Slovakia, its roots, values, and identity.  The teachers, employees, and students of the Academy of Fine Arts and Design (AFAD) express urgent dissatisfaction with the removal of Denisa Lehocká’s work at the Slovak National Gallery (SNG). We consider this barbaric—a rough handling of works that belong to our common cultural heritage. It demonstrates the incivility of the gallery’s current leadership and its inability to bear professional as well as legal responsibility for the gallery and its collections.

Denisa Lehocká’s work stood in the way of a new planned display of Slovak art by SNG curator Martin Dostál. The exhibition titled Bang! Bang!? is a selection of works by important Slovak artists that entered the collections thanks to the professional competence of curators who were dismissed or have left. Curator Dostál behaves in the SNG storage as if shopping in a supermarket. Therefore, new contexts and connections for these well-known, many-times-presented works should not be expected.