Celebration: Ten Years with NTK
On September 9th, 2019, the National Library of Technology will celebrate its 10th anniversary. The cutting-edge building, which has received a number of architectural awards and which does not only serve students and the academic community but also the public, has prepared an extensive celebration program. Visitors can look forward to concerts by the Tata Bojs band and the Collegium 1704 barouque ensamble, an exhibition of photographs and rare books, guided tours, and a launch of anniversary books. Entrance is free; everyone is welcome!
“The library has been full of life since the moment it opened its door for the first time. Not just that, its attendance curve is still rising, which means we built something that people need and that was missing here before. This makes us really happy,” library director Martin Svoboda said.
The celebration will take place on September 9th, 2019, starting with the opening of the exhibition entitled “10 years of the NTK in photographs.” Afterwards, visitors can attend the free guided tours to discover interesting facts about the library and to ask any question they are interested in. In the afternoon, NTK will present the long anticipated TECHNÉ exhibition, which will present extraordinary items from the library‘s Rare Books Special Collections department together with modern Czech and international artworks.
Petr Nouza, one of the exhibition’s organizers, said: “For example, you will see Mechanika, Hanus Holtzhammer’s manuscript from 1603 containing 134 images of various machines and drives painted by hand. In addition, we will showcase the Venetian edition of L’Architettura, a book about architecture from 1565 written by Italian humanist Albertini. Other old prints, for example, will represent work of Archimedes, Isaac Newton, and Petr Apian.”
Visitors can also look forward to seeing artworks by the world-renowned Romanian artist Dan Perjovschi, who created the “comic-like” drawings adorning the library’s atrium in 2009. ”We are thrilled Mr. Perjovschi will be joining us; his presence will be the icing on the cake. Thanks to him, NTK embodies the student spirit and is not monotonous. Let me also remind you that Perjovschi’s work in the atrium is the only of his exhibitions which is permanent. Everything else is usually painted over,” director Martin Svoboda said.
A gala celebration will begin at 6 p.m. on the second floor near the Main Service Desk. ”The program will be divided into two parts. During the formal one, we will launch our new books and enjoy a concert by the Collegium 1704 baroque ensemble. In our experience, classical music sounds amazing inside the building. Later on, we will move to the second, more relaxed part of the program. Right outside the library, we will enjoy a musical performance of the popular band Tata Bojs,” Martin Svoboda said.
The National Library of Technology is celebrating its second significant anniversary in two years. Last year, during the celebration of the ninth “birthday”, it also celebrated the 300th anniversary of its book collection, which once belonged to the very first engineering professor of Czech estates, Christian Josef Willenberg. Professor Willenberg started the library while teaching twelve students in 1718. Today, NTK has over 30,000 registred patrons and tens of thousands other visitors.
The celebration program:
10:30 a.m.
- Opening of the exhibition “10 years of NTK in photographs” (in front of the NTK building)
11:00 a.m., 12:00 p.m., and 1.30 p.m.
- Guided tours through the building (start in Balling Hall)
3:00 p.m.
- Guided tour of the TECHNÉ exhibition in the NTK Gallery. Dan Perjovschi, world-renowned artist and creator of the “comics-style” drawings in the NTK atrium, will also attend.
Starting at 6:00 p.m. (second floor)
- Ceremonial speech / Launch of anniversary books
- Concert by Collegium 1704, an internationally-renowned, Prague-based baroque ensemble
Starting at 8:30 p.m. (in front of the NTK building)
- Tata Bojs concert
