On the 5th of September 2019, the Techné exhibition opened in the NTK Gallery. Spread out over two floors, the show will present a representative selection of precious historical scientific books from the NTK’s fund, side by side with contemporary art from both the Czech Republic and abroad.
The Techné exhibition is part of the celebrations of the ten-year anniversary of the opening of the Czech National Library of Technology in Prague. The building of NTK, a successful realisation by the Projektil architecture studio, was opened to the public on the 9th of September 2009. The history of NTK’s literary fund, however, reaches back to the year 1718, to the establishment of the library of the Estates Professorship in Engineering, one of the oldest technical schools in Europe. The founder of the institution, the first (and at first the only) professor, Christian Joseph Willenberg, received three hundred pieces of gold to purchase books. These books became the basis of the archives the Czech National Library of Technology has at its disposal today.