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1989 Dialogue Prague/Los Angeles.

Program.

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Dialogue Prague/Los Angeles was an exchange exhibition of emerging artists beginning in 1989. It was conceived as an entirely independent intitative by two curators and two groups of artists who considered it ridiculous that their artistic exploration of each others’ cultures and of the outer world in general should be limited by any artificial barriers erected to divide them. United by their common conviction that the right of free expression is a natural precondition for any serious and responsible art production and brought together by their stubbornness and defiance, the American and Czechoslovak artists launched the exchange project and bore most of the financial isolationist cultural structures of then Stalinist Czechoslovakia.

Artists.

USA:​

  • Barbara Benish

  • Llyn Foulkes

  • Nancy Buchanan

  • Kim Jones

  • George Herms

  • Betye Saar

  • John Baldessari

  • Chris Burden

  • Robert Irwin

  • Allen Ruppersberg

  • Bill Viola

  • Charles Gaines

  • Richard Jackson

CZ:

  • Petr Štembera

  • Karel Miler

  • Jiří Kovanda

  • Milan Knížák

  • Tomáš Ruller

  • Václav Stratil

  • Jana Šindelová

  • Adéla Matasová

  • Jiří David

  • Ivan Kafka

  • Radek Pilař

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Artists Work.

LA Exhibitions.

Artist Statements.

30th Anniversary

1989 Dialogue
Prague/Los Angeles.

Celebrating 1989 and the 30 year anniversary of ArtDialog at the DOX Centre of Contemporary Art in Prague!

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We will be exhibiting original photos, documents, video, audio and more from the art exchange between 15 American and 12 Czech artists that was a milestone in it's time.

Prior to 1989, the Czechoslovakian regime banned any contemporary art that did not support their dogma. This slowly changed in the late 80’s as artists pushed the authorities with clandestine exhibits and increasingly challenging work in the streets and hops fields across the country. By July of that summer, Dialog: Praha/Los Angeles opened its doors to the public. The exhibitions in Prague brought thousands of people to the galleries at Lidovy Dum and Mladych, creating a crack in the regime’s hostility towards the West.


The Velvet Revolution came just a few months later, led by artists and intellectuals. It demonstrated the importance of the arts and turned former dissident and writer, Vaclav Havel into the new president of Czechoslovakia.

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This was a formative point in history and we are excited to share with you where it all started, and acknowledge how far we have come, as a small arts organization in Central Europe...

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