Muzeum fotografie a moderních obrazových médií / Museum of Photography and Modern Visual Media - Jindrichuv Hradec (South Bohemia) - Art Museums on Waymarking.com

Museum of Photography and Modern Visual Media (Muzeum fotografie a moderních obrazových médií), one of the biggests Czech museums devoted to photography & related arts, occupies late-Renaissance complex of former Jesuit College in Jindrichuv Hradec.

The activities of the Museum of Photography and Modern Visual Media in are concentrated primarily on photography but it also covers other visual media. In its exhibition programme the Museum presents the works of Czech and foreign photographers – the work of acclaimed classic and important contemporary photographers, both professional and amateur. The Museum has collections of contemporary and historical photographs, photographic equipment and operates a high-tech digitization workshop.

In collaboration with the National Technical Museum in Prague, an permanent extensive exposition called the "Power of the Media" has been gradually installed to give an idea of the history of photography and audiovisual media in the Czech Lands since the invention of photography in 1839 to the present.

The second permanent exposition focuses on the history of the present seat of the Museum, the Jesuit College in Jindrichuv Hradec - its founders and supporters, the Lords of Hradec and the significant personalities who were active there as teachers or students - such as Bohuslav Balbín, Jirí Josef Camel, Ferenc II. Rákóczi, Tomáš Pešina of Cechorod, the Jindrichuv Hradec native Adam Václav Michna of Otradovice or Florian Paucke whose manuscript from his mission in Paraguay is held at the Zwettl monastery in Lower Austria.

[ Excerpted from Museum web ]

The Jesuit college in Jindrichuv Hradec was built in the style of the late Renaissance in the years 1595-1605. The College was built at the expense of Adam II. of Hradec (Jindrich II z Hradce) and his wife Catherine of Montfort. If Adam and Jáchym of Hradec were religiously tolerant, the relationship of Adam II to non-Catholics changed mainly due to the influence of his German wife Catherine of Montfort - she was a bigoted Catholic. At her intercession, he summoned the Jesuits to Jindrichuv Hradec in 1594. At that time, over 20 houses were demolished on the walls and two large buildings intended for the Jesuits were built at the acquired free space. Thic College and later the opposite Seminary. The south, the largest wing, was decorated with sgraffito, the other wings of the building, grouped around the open courtyard, were lower. The southeast corner of the College is adjacent to the western part of the nave of the Church of St. Mary Magdalene. The College served to its original purpose until the abolition of the Jesuit order by Joseph II. in 1773. Then it served military purposes until the 1990s. Department of Defence transferred College to the property of Jindrichuv Hradec after 1989, and whole complex was reconstructed in the following years. Today, it houses the Museum of Photography and Modern Image Media and a café.