The Náprstek Museum is a museum of
Asian,
African and
Native American art
Visual arts by indigenous peoples of the Americas encompasses the visual artistic practices of the indigenous peoples of the Americas from ancient times to the present. These include works from South America and North America, which includes ...
located in Bethlehem Square ( cs, Betlemske namesti) in
Prague
Prague ( ; cs, Praha ; german: Prag, ; la, Praga) is the capital and largest city in the Czech Republic, and the historical capital of Bohemia. On the Vltava river, Prague is home to about 1.3 million people. The city has a temperate ...
,
Czech Republic
The Czech Republic, or simply Czechia, is a landlocked country in Central Europe. Historically known as Bohemia, it is bordered by Austria to the south, Germany to the west, Poland to the northeast, and Slovakia to the southeast. The ...
. It is one of several permanent exhibitions of the
National Museum
A national museum is a museum maintained and funded by a national government. In many countries it denotes a museum run by the central government, while other museums are run by regional or local governments. In other countries a much greater numb ...
. The museum is situated in the former brewing and wine-making compound of U Halanku in the
Prague Old Town.
History
The museum, originally private, was founded in 1874
by Czech
national revivalist politician
Vojtěch Náprstek in his former family brewery, as the Czech Industrial Museum. After his death the museum became the Ethnographic Museum, and since
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...
it has been focused on non-European cultures.
In the 19th century the museum was one of the cultural and educational centres of the Czech intelligentsia. Much of its collection comes from Náprstek and his friends who were Czech expatriates, travellers and ethnographers. Only a part of the museum's large collection is available to the public.
References
External links
Naprstek Museum
Collections of the National Museum in Prague
Museums in Prague
Art museums and galleries in the Czech Republic
Asian art museums
1862 establishments in the Austrian Empire
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