“You are our future, if you maintain common sense!” The quote by Vladimír Dedeček, architect of the iconic “bridge gallery” at the Slovak National Gallery (SNG) in Bratislava, has today become a conspicuous self-fulfilling prophecy. Two exhibitions recently celebrated the reopening of Dedeček’s building, “Vladimír Dedeček: Past and Present” and “Vladimír Dedeček and SNG: A Story from the Future,” with a surprising outcome.

The former was a classic retrospective. Dedeček, one of the most prominent Slovak architects, designed spectacular late modern and brutalist venues. His early work was the bold university campus and auditorium in Nitra (1956–66) with thin convex and concave shells spanning 36 meters, alluding to Oscar Niemeyer. The Slovak State Archive in Bratislava (1971–83) presents his design method of stacking and intersecting volumes. The exhibition approached the audience on three levels: via a biographical timeline, large 1:10 models, and film insights. The space’s conceptual whiteness suggested the main focus was Dedeček’s composite design method, an art of joinery in the era of concrete and steel elements.

“Vladimír Dedeček and SNG: A Story from the Future” disentangled the complex political and personal history behind the competition and extension of the SNG. Dedeček designed the bridge gallery as a load-bearing truss superstructure spanning the front façade of 73,5 meters, creating a cascade of three gallery floors, lit by dispersed daylight, in 1967. However, after the end of Czechoslovakia’s revolutionary period in 1968, the SNG’s founding director was fired. The gallery opened in 1977 under the conservative state establishment’s new leadership. The bridge gallery served its purpose until it was closed in 2001 for emergency reasons. After 21 years of vacancy it was a major accomplishment of director and curator Alexandra Kusá, to convince authorities to reconstruct the unique bridge gallery wing that reopened in 2023. However, instead of being celebrated, Kusá was dismantled by today’s new conservative government. So, is it just history repeating, or can we maintain some common sense, and possibly, a future?  

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