Jiří Fajt

In 2010 he unequivocally succeeded before an international commission in the selection procedure for the post of the Director General of the National Gallery in Prague; on July 4, 2013 he was appointed Director General of the National Gallery in Prague, taking up the position on July 1, 2014.

From 2001 he worked as a visiting professor at the Technical University Berlin where in 2009 he habilitated with a publication, Der Nürnberger Maler Sebald Weinschröter im Netzwerk von Kaiserhof und Patriziat (1349–1365/70) (in 2009, he thus obtained in the field of art history the degree of Dr. habil., from 2011 he was a private senior lecturer – PD Dr.). Apart from that, he lectured at Humboldt University in Berlin and at Charles University in Prague. In 2012 he also habilitated at the Faculty of Arts, Charles University in Prague, presenting his publication Der lange Schatten Karls IV. Zur Rezeption der luxemburgischen Herrschaftsrepräsentation im Heiligen Römischen Reich. (2012 – Doc.)

Jiří Fajt (born 11 May 1960 in Prague) is a Czech art historian living in Berlin and in Prague. From July 2014 to April 2019 he served as a Director General of the National Gallery in Prague. He is particularly interested in mediaeval and early modern arts of Central and Central-Eastern Europe. He is the author of a number of publications and successful international exhibitions.

Fajt was born in Prague on 11 May 1960. In 1983 he graduated from the Czech University of Life Sciences Prague and for a few subsequent years (1984–88) he made his living as a window cleaner in the Prague firm Úklid. In 1987 he started reading art history as an extramural student of the Faculty of Philosophy of Charles University in Prague. A year later he started working as a curator of the Collection of Czech Stone Sculpture of the 11th–19th centuries in the Lapidarium of the National Museum in Prague. In 1992 he became a curator of the collection of mediaeval art of the National Gallery in Prague and two years later, he won the competition for the post of the head of the Collection of the Old Masters. In 1999 he obtained a doctorate in art history at Charles University in Prague. Between 1998 and 2001 he also worked as a founding director of the Centre for Medieval Art at the National Gallery in Prague (financed by the VW Stiftung). In 2000 he left the National Gallery in Prague of his own accord, as an expression of disapproval of the then head of the NG, Milan Knížák and since then, worked in Germany where he also subsequently moved with his family.