The West-Bohemian Museum belongs to the most important museum institutions in Bohemia and scientific work centres in a number of scientific subjects. The hundred and thirty year’s history of museology in Plzeň reflects the cultural and political development of the Czech state and the regional history. The fates of museology in Plzeň are connected inseparably with the history of the town and the West-Bohemian region.
The first attempts for establishing a museum in Plzeň are associated with the director of the Premonstratensian Museum Josef Stanislav Zauper in 1847. The museum had to include a grammar-school and municipal collections. Other, also unsuccessful attempts, this time on the initiative of the Business and Trade Chamber in Plzeň, are associated with Ignác Schiebl (1851) and Hugo Jelínek (1867). A supporting society called “The Society of the Industrial Museum and Permanent Exhibition of Products and Raw-Materials of the Region of Plzeň” was established that year. It was as late as in 1878 that “The Society of Friends of Bohemian Literature and Science” enforced the establishment of a museum and prepared its statutes. According to this proposal, historical, ethnographic and scientific objects had to be collected and the museum also had to fulfil the function of an industrial museum. On 8 November 1878, the Municipal Council of the Town of Plzeň established a Municipal Museum for the Town of Plzeň and West Bohemia. At the same time, the museum received the spaces in the ground floor of the grammar school in Fodermayerova Str. (the building of the today’s National Scientific Library). The museum was opened to the public after necessary reconstruction on 24 July 1880. The focus and the considerable increase in collections called for museum reorganization. On 7 November 1888, the museum was divided into two separate establishments, namely the West-Bohemian Arts and Crafts Museum and the Municipal Historical Museum. In the same year, the Municipal Council decided to build a new museum building. Design and project preparation was entrusted to architekt Josef Škorpil, Director of the Arts and Crafts Museum. The designing works were finished in 1895. The raw building structure was finished in 1898 by the firm Eduard Kroh from Plzeň. The building works were completed in 1899. A number of artists participated in the internal decoration. The façade plastic decoration and the hall stucco decoration was realized to the design of sculptor Celda Klouček, the lunettes of the Jubilee Hall were painted by Augustin Němejc, and the main staircase decoration was completed by sculptor Vojtěch Šaff in 1900 with a large relief called "The Maiden War". The collections of the Arts and Crafts Museum and of the Historical Museum were opened to the public in 1913.
The decree of the Imperial and Royal Ministry of the Interior of 23 October 1901 (Ref. No. 7548) granting the Royal Town of Plzeň, under the Supreme Resolution, the permit to call its historical and industrial museum to the Supreme Name of His Majesty as the Museum of the Emperor and King Franz Josef I and provide it with an inscription Francisco-Josephinum, was of extraordinary importance at that time. According to this Supreme Resolution, the establishments would call:
- The Historical Museum of the Emperor and King Franz Josef I in Plzeň
- The West-Bohemian Arts and Crafts Museum of the Emperor and King Franz Josef I
In 1909, a Group of Friends of Antiques under the leadership of Ladislav Lábek was established in Plzeň. Its activities were followed in 1911 by the Society for Ethnography and Preservation of Monuments of Plzeň and vicinity. In 1914, the town purchased the Gerlachovský House in Dřevěná Street for the needs of this Society and for the purposes of an ethnographic museum. The Ethnographic Museum was established on 22 February 1918.
The heads of the West-Bohemian Museum were the leaders of the museum and museological activities of the Czechoslovak Republic after the year 1918. The director of the Historical Museum PhDr. Frídolín Macháček was the initiator and leader of the Association of Czechoslovak Museums. On 27-28 September 1919, the advisory committee of the Association of Czech Museums has its meeting in Plzeň. The members of the advisory committee were Z.Wirth, K.Guth and Frídolín Macháček, who prepared a conception for the Association activities. His conception of museum work enjoys permanent validity and has not been surpassed in its fundamental principles until today. In early July 1925, the Director of the Ethnographic Museum Ladislav Lábek prepared the principles of museum records and collection administration. This record-keeping system has been the base for all Directives for Collection Administration in museums and galleries until recently. The Director of the Arts and Crafts Museum univ.prof. Jindřich Čadík was a renowned founder of classical archaeology at the Charles’ University. His works have been valid until today. <!--[if !vml]-->
From March 1939, due to the onset of the totalitarian regime, the works of the museums became politicized for many years. In March 1939, the legionary Liberation Museum – an exposition of the Historical Museum – was closed. On 19 July 1940, the Gestapo transported part of the collections to an unknown place. The museum directors were retired and arrested later, the Director of the Historical Museum Dr. Frídolín Macháček on 17 January 1944 and the Director of the Arts and Crafts Museum prof.dr. Jindřich Čadík on 3 July 1944. On 15 March 1943, the German administration consolidated the museums under a single unit, cancelled the expositions partially and made transfers of the collections between the museum buildings. Late in 1944 and early in 1945, Plzeň was affected by repeated air raids of the allied armies on the town’s centre. The museum building especially was damaged during these air raids but also some collection articles. Immediately after the war end, the museum personnel inspected and re-deposited the collections. It was found out that a greater damage was caused through the administration interventions rather than through the war events. All museums cooperated closely after 1945 on museology reconstitution in Plzeň. In the years 1945-47, the heads of the museums were engaged in resolving the question whether three separate museums or one museum consolidated in a single legal unit would be operated in Plzeň. The discussion was resolved by the change in the political orientation of the state in 1948. On 8 March 1948, all museums in Plzeň were consolidated finally into one establishment under the name West-Bohemian Museum in Plzeň. Shortly after that, an Archive of the City of Plzeň was detached from the West-Bohemian Museum collections, the library of the Historical Museum was transferred to the established National Scientific Library in Plzeň in 1950, and, finally, the collections of pictures and sculptures were divided between the Museum and the newly established West-Bohemian Gallery in 1953. Thus, the collections assembled in the museums of Plzeň from the year 1878 were separated finally.
In 1958, the museum was connected freely with the gallery and with the newly established Regional Centre of State Preservation of Monuments and Nature (SPPOP) to form a single administrative unit titled the Regional Institute of National History and Geography in Plzeň. However, the period of life of this non-functional conglomerate of organizations of different focus was short. The Regional Centre of SPPOP and the West-Bohemian Gallery in Plzeň separated already in 1960. Both the gallery and the museum used the historical museum building until 1985.
But the West-Bohemian Museum in Plzeň continued expanding its activities. In 1959, a Brewery Museum was established in the spaces of the former malt house at Veleslavínova Str. 6 as a branch of the West-Bohemian Museum. The building was reconstructed at the expense of the museum and a worthy exposition of the brewing industry in Plzeň was built up in the 70s. In March 1987, the building with the collections was surrendered to the state enterprise Plzeňské piovary (Pilsner Breweries) under the decision of the West-Bohemian Regional National Committee. In this respect, it was necessary to relocate the depositories and worksites of the museum departments of botany and zoology. The geological-palaeontological department was cancelled already in 1975 and its collections accumulated.
A fundamental change in the museum activities and in the work of its staff occurred in 1984. The maintenance needs neglected for many years resulted in the museum building disrepair. The building was found to be affected by wood-destroying fungi. The damage was so extensive that the whole roof timberwork and the roof cover with the towers had to be replaced. The condition of the building constructed early in the 20th century was no longer compliant with the operational and safety requirements put on museum buildings towards the end of the century. The Regional Designing Institute, Chief Designer Ing.arch. Jan Soukup, was entrusted to prepare a reconstruction design. After the organization was dissolved later, the firm SOUKUP s.r.o. took over the designing works including the continuous additions and changes.
In relation with the general repair of the building, it was necessary to move all the museum and library collections from the museum building to provisional, unsuitable rooms. The museum collections were moved to the provisional depositories within a period of one year. These provisional rooms were returned to their owners in the period 1990/1991 and the West-Bohemian Museum again had to relocate the collections from these restituted buildings to other provisional ones. With the support of the Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic (which has been the founder of the West-Bohemian Museum since 1990) the museum purchased and leased substitute buildings which had the capacity to resolve the depository and working needs of the museum for the next decades. The maintenance, repair, operation and guarding of them are, however, too high for the museum budget. Since 1992, the departments of the West-Bohemian Museum use the following historical names in justified cases: the West-Bohemian Museum in Plzeň – Historical Museum, Scientific Museum, Ethnographic Museum, Arts and Crafts Museum, and Library of the West-Bohemian Museum.
The main building of the West-Bohemian Museum in Plzeň was reopened in 1998, although it is not until today that we expect the completion of the general reconstruction. The work of the museum did not stagnate during the time of the museum collections and expositions being closed. During the last two decades, the museum has developed especially its scientific and research work under research grants, grant projects and institute research tasks. Modern depositories have been built. The museum issued and still issues a number of professional publications and collections of a scientific and social-scientific focus.
The public administration reorganization had also an impact on the West-Bohemian Museum in Plzeň. In 2001, the museum was delimited under the Pilsen Region. The Pilsen Region approached responsibly to its function as the museum founder and many ancient problems concerning space and financial matters were resolved within the course of several years. The helpful attitude of the Pilsen Region to the museum activities enabled its further intensive development. The deposition of the collections in new depositories, preservation and restoration are the current priorities. The newly reconstructed halls of the main museum building make it possible to undertake various exhibition activities. The museum faces a far from easy task for the immediate future – to find means for construction of permanent expositions. The expositions are ready from the professional point of view and will be implemented as soon as the museum building reconstruction is finished.
We owe our predecessors Frídolín Macháček, Ladislav Lábek and Jindřich Čadík a great deal. Let us believe that the new generation of museum workers not only in the West-Bohemian Museum take a lesson from their legacy for their work. At present, the West-Bohemian Museum is divided into a number of professional departments processing the museum collections (approximately 2 million items) to their respective focus.
The collections consist of a prehistorical archaeological collection completed with several auxiliary sets of materials (archive, maps, plans, photographic documentation – negatives, slides, conservation reports, etc.). The collection documents the oldest history of the Pilsen Region from Paleolite (40,000 B.C.) until the establishment of the Czech state, approximately 1000 A.D. At present (31/12/2006), the prehistorical collection has 67,419 inventory numbers under which 418,663 collection items are recorded. Most of the new additions are the sets of findings from the area rescue surveys in the region.The unique artefacts include a bronze shield from Plzeň-Jíkalka (Late Bronze Age), a Neolith women’s sculpture from Vochov (so-called Vochov Venus, the stroked pottery culture), bronze mask-form clips from Dýšina and Kyšice (Early Laten Period), a bronze situla found at Dobřany, coils of golden wire from mound burials of the Middle Bronze Age, a zoomorphic vessel from grave 129 at Plzeň-Radčice, and a depot of bronze artefacts from Ves Touškov with Křtěnov-type axes.