More than 100,000 visitors already. Galerie Rudolfinum celebrates a special year in 2025

The gallery started offering “pay what you wish” admission, and as a New Year’s gift, the Kateřina Vincourová Skin Care exhibition has been extended until January 11, 2026.

Already in 2025, Galerie Rudolfinum has welcomed over 100,000 visitors, making this year the second most visited in the gallery’s 32-year history since it opened in 1994*. The gallery has deepened its relationship with audiences in Prague and established an even stronger position in the international art world under the management of director Julia Bailey.

“The Galerie Rudolfinum team and I are truly delighted with our second-highest attendance figures ever and would like to thank all visitors for their interest in contemporary art and the Galerie Rudolfinum programme. In the spring, we conducted an extensive survey which showed that our visitors greatly appreciate the free admission we have offered for the past seven years. However, they also expressed a desire for more ways to support the gallery, including the choice to pay for admission and thus contribute to the running of the gallery, our exhibitions and our accompanying events. We therefore decided to test “pay what you wish” admission, which gives them real flexibility – from free admission for children, students, seniors, and anyone who is unable to contribute, to an option to pay an amount of their choosing for those who want to express their appreciation by financially supporting Galerie Rudolfinum. We will continue with “pay what you wish” admission in 2026,” confirmed Julia Bailey, director of Galerie Rudolfinum.

“This support is vital as pressure on public services continues while the cost of Galerie Rudolfinum’s basic operations escalates every year. We are proud to be under the Ministry of Culture and grateful for our additional sponsors and patrons of the Galerie Rudolfinum Club. Galerie Rudolfinum will need to receive more public and private support to be able to maintain current operations but our success in 2025 shows just how much the gallery has to offer – and how much our visitors value us,” added Julia Bailey.

In 2025, four major exhibitions and one exhibition project in collaboration with the international festival Designblok attracted numerous visitors from abroad and the Czech Republic to Galerie Rudolfinum, which is a leading Prague gallery for international contemporary art. Popular accompanying programmes such as the CRASH lecture series, the Art Sounds music series, dance workshops and performances, guided tours, educational courses for children, and Ateliérovky, regular Sunday art workshops for the youngest visitors, also contributed to the high visitor numbers.

“My studio team and I are delighted to have played a part in Galerie Rudolfinum achieving this significant milestone,” commented British artist and international icon of contemporary art Antony Gormley on the record attendance. His joint exhibition with Czech architect Pavla Melková ended in the first week of January.

The spring exhibition Poetics of Encryption attracted considerable interest, particularly among the younger generation. It raised highly topical questions about our relationship with modern technologies, which we use on a daily basis and rely on in key areas of our lives, yet often have no idea how they actually work.

“Being part of Galerie Rudolfinum’s 2025 programme was a tremendous privilege, and I am delighted that the year’s offer was so well attended. Bringing my exhibition Poetics of Encryption to Prague was especially meaningful: the city’s intellectual and artistic openness created the perfect context for exploring how technology shapes our perception, our privacy, and our imagination. The engagement and curiosity of the audience made the exhibition feel truly alive,” said Nadim Samman, the Berlin-based curator and author of the exhibition, which enjoyed success in Berlin and Copenhagen before coming to Prague.

“Having the chance to exhibit Panorama Cat at Galerie Rudolfinum in front of so many visitors was a blast. The sculpture was installed in a rather peculiar position – rather than appearing as a typical artwork on display, it looked as if it were strolling along the museum walls, a curious – if slightly odd – creature taking in the splendour of the Rudolfinum building,” commented the Milan-based artistic duo Eva & Franco Mattes, who appreciated the popularity of their eight-legged ginger Panorama Cat, which became the mascot of the exhibition.

During the summer months, visitors were drawn to the gallery by a lively green park with trees, flowers, and shrubs (including currant bushes bearing fruit) planted directly in the largest of the exhibition halls. The installation dominated the exhibition Iván Argote: Radical Tenderness, by the Colombian artist working in Paris. At the same time, a certain connection between Prague and New York was created, as during the exhibition at Galerie Rudolfinum, visitors to New York’s famous High Line could admire Argote’s installation of a giant pigeon sculpture called Dinosaur.

“Radical Tenderness at Galerie Rudolfinum was a dream and an important moment for my work. It is my largest institutional show to date – and probably the most beautiful one! The scale of the gallery gave the works and installations an incredible aura. I received amazing feedback not only from locals who wrote to me or shared my work on online platforms, but also from the international art community that follow both my practice and the Rudolfinum’s program,” said Iván Argote, who collaborated with Italian curator Leonardo Bigazzi on his presentation.

“It has been a joy and a true honour to work at Galerie Rudolfinum as the curator of Ivan Argote: Radical Tenderness. The experience has been deeply enriching, both personally and professionally, and I am profoundly grateful for the dedication, professionalism, and unwavering support of the entire team. Their commitment made this project not only possible, but inspiring at every step,” Leonardo Bigazzi praised the preparation of the exhibition by Galerie Rudolfinum.

During the gallery’s collaboration with the Designblok festival throughout November 2025, the newly opened Loggia of Galerie Rudolfinum hosted the exhibition Mary McCartney: STRIKING by PLAYCE.

Autumn and the end of the year belong to the large solo exhibition of Czech artist Kateřina Vincourová Skin Care, curated by Denisa Kujelová.

“I would like to thank everyone who opened the doors of Galerie Rudolfinum to me. Now I know what I wanted. To embed myself in the space and minds of the audience. To become a natural part of it and, like a weed, to overgrow and intertwine with my objects and the ideas associated with them. In this defined time and space. To catch the viewer like a thistle and stick to them with at least one sharp seed, perhaps behind their cuff. Thank you,” said Kateřina Vincourová, adding: “I am thrilled by the enormous popularity of Galerie Rudolfinum, which continues to grow.”

Exhibition curator Denisa Kujelová added: “I am very pleased that Kateřina Vincourová has been given the opportunity to present her work to a wide audience in this generous space and also that, thanks to our exhibition, Galerie Rudolfinum is opening up to other solo exhibitions by Czech female artists. I am sincerely delighted by how strongly and sensitively people are responding to the exhibition. This transferable and shared lived experience is one of the most powerful moments of the entire project for me.”

On this occasion, Galerie Rudolfinum is publishing a monograph on the artist, released on December 11, 2025 to coincide with a free guided tour of the exhibition by the artist and curator. And as a New Year’s gift to visitors, Galerie Rudolfinum has extended the exhibition until January 11, 2026.

* The most-visited year in Galerie Rudolfinum’s history is 2017, when 161,824 visitors alone saw Krištof Kintera’s legendary exhibition Nervous Trees.

The full press release can be found HERE.