Implementation of Innovations in Culture, Cultural Heritage and Arts: Experience of the Czech Republic

Implementation of Innovations in Culture, Cultural Heritage and Arts: Experience of the Czech Republic presents a comprehensive study of the development of Czech cultural research, heritage studies, and the sciences of art from the establishment of the independent Czech Republic in 1993 to 2025. Rather than treating 1993 as the beginning of a new cultural system, the book demonstrates how institutions and scholarly traditions inheritedfrom Czechoslovakia and earlier periods were reorganised under democratic conditions. Particular attention is given to the successive stages of post-socialist institutional reconstruction, European integration, professionalisation, digitalisation, growing public participation, and the emergence of cultural resilience as an important principle of contemporary cultural policy and research.
The study examines cultural research as a plural interdisciplinary environment encompassing cultural identity and collective memory, ethnology and anthropology, cultural policy, cultural and creative industries, digital culture, and public humanities. Cultural heritage is considered as an autonomous field of research and preservation, including architectural and archaeological heritage, museums and collections, intangible traditions, industrial and technical heritage, cultural landscapes, conservation science, digital heritage, international heritage networks, tourism, and community participation. A separate part analyses the transformation of Czech art history and art studies, covering medieval and modern art, contemporary visual culture, architecture and design, museology and curatorial studies, musicology, theatre, performance, and artistic research.
The book ultimately presents the Czech experience as a distinctive model in which historical continuity is combined with methodological innovation, interdisciplinary cooperation, technological development, international integration, and public cultural responsibility. By 2025, Czech cultural scholarship had developed into a polycentric and institutionally interconnected research ecology linking universities, the Czech Academy of Sciences, museums, galleries, libraries, archives, heritage organisations, artistic institutions, digital infrastructures, and cultural-policy bodies. The study shows that one of the principal achievements of this development lies not in replacing inherited traditions, but in adapting them to new social, technological, environmental, and intellectual conditions while preserving the professional knowledge and cultural evidence on which future research depends.