“This is the first space dedicated to art to be built in the centre of Prague in almost 100 years,” says Petr Pudil proudly, talking about Kunsthalle Praha, the private museum he and his wife Pavlína are inaugurating on February 22.
It is sited in a former electrical substation in the historic centre of the capital, and indeed there is a unit in the basement still powering Prague’s trams. But the Pudils assure me there will be no hum or vibrations to distract from the three exhibition spaces they have created in the 5,700 sq m building.
They bought it seven years ago, though the idea of establishing a Kunsthalle had been germinating for years before that. “We already had the idea of doing something for Prague, but we needed to find the right place — and then the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity [to buy the substation] came along,” says Pavlína.
Neither she nor Petr comes from a…