While in the previous years SKODA Auto Museum calendars featured literally gems of the exposition, this year we are opening to our museum fans an imaginary door to our fascinating and mysterious depository. Seeing places that are normally kept out of sight may provoke anxious feelings similar to those which we have when we visit a retirement home or a long-term hospital. Something like a sad remainder of past glories? 

 

No, dear reader, there is no reason to be sad. We all wish that we can relive those great adventures when we, as kids, were playing in old barns, abandoned sheds and other magical places, discovering hidden treasures of history. They may be covered with dust, bear the marks of their once heroic life, but they also provide a testimony of wonderful times of discovering all imaginable technical and artistic solutions. Each car has its own captivating story, documenting the ingenuity of engineers, imagination of designers and workmanship of individual professions that participated in the fi nal outcome. 

 

But not merely that. Each of those “oldies” attracts the attention of contemporary experts and craftsmen as well. Through the research that precedes every restoration, it can teach us what infi niteness and inventiveness of mind is required when unveiling forgotten details of its conception, just as it can represent a challenge for contemporary craftsmen-restorers to pay tribute through their work, so different from the contemporary series productions, to the craftsmen of the past. 

 

When we say “tradition”, it sounds drily and a little bit bookishly, too. However, when we imagine how much work was once required to make a single car and what effort it takes today to restore each of these great automobiles and take it back onto the stage under the spotlights to revive its glory and appreciation in the museum exposition, we realize that our respect for tradition represents, above all, respect and celebration of the unrelenting work both of those who were able to create extraordinary values in the past, and of those who take care of those values today. Stories about brilliant ideas, but also unfortunate mistakes, about ups and downs and disillusionments suddenly do not sound drily at all, but, on the contrary, joyful and picaresque. The depository of an automobile museum is simply just as living organism as the museum itself should be – and, indeed, is.

 

Welcome to the museum and, please: come in and see the exposition through the perceptive eyes of a curious child.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Jan Slavík, Alena Michálková, Michal Šípka, Ondřej Výška, Zuzana Stromková, Barbora Faiglová, Petr Maršík

 

 

 

Exhibition in Ogilvy & Mather Headquarter, Prague, 2012

 

 

Calendar of the Year 2012 Award