Petra Widžová – Past told, future held

Petra Widžová – Past Told, Future Held

The exhibition presents a video project that explores the often invisible work involved in caring for artists’ estates, drawing on the doctoral research of curator Petra Widžová, which she has been conducting at the Faculty of Art and Design at UJEP since 2023. Through intimate portraits of curators, the videos reveal the nature of the work, the daily duties, and the emotional investment involved in managing artistic estates. The exhibition explores the limits of curation—physical, mental, spatial, and institutional—and addresses the question of the future of these cultural legacies. How long should they be preserved, and what is actually most important about them?

Four original videos combine elements of storytelling, portraiture, and documentary in a gallery setting, introducing the curators of four artistic estates and future artistic estates: Martina Zetová (the estate of Miloš Zet), Jana Písaříková (custodian of Jiří Valoch’s estate), Kateřina Trlifajová and Magdaléna Plíšková (the estates of Pavel Brázda and Věra Nováková), and the Vašulka Kitchen Brno team (the legacy of Steina and Woody Vašulka).

The topic of artists’ estates has received little attention in the Czech Republic so far. Curator Petra Widžová is exploring this issue in her doctoral research, Approaches to Managing Artists’ Estates in the Czech Republic, at the Faculty of Art and Design at UJEP (supervisor: Assoc. Prof. Anna Vartecká, Ph.D.). The videos were created as part of doctoral research supported between 2024 and 2026 by the Student Grant Competition program, grant no. UJEP-SGS-2024-46-004-3.

Exhibition dates: March 12 – April 26, 2026
Mon–Fri: 1:00 PM – 7:00 PM, Sat–Sun: 10:00 AM – 6:00 PM