The objective of FCA Prague activities is to support the development of contemporary fine arts as an important part of a harmonically developing civil society.
The Foundation’s program is designed to support both the liberal creativity of individual artists without the influence of ideologies or commercial pressure, as well as the strengthening of the social role of fine arts.
This results in the two most important criteria according to which financial contributions are allocated and the basic strategy for activities is decided. These include the criterion of artistic quality and criterion of the social scope of art.
The criterion of artistic quality is based on the professional stance of experienced art historians, members of the grant commission elected for a three-year period. Although this professional criterion may often evoke distrust from the lay public, it is very important primarily from two perspectives. Without a flexible yet firm spine of the artistic value criterion, the allocation of the foundation’s contributions and the entire activity of the Foundation would turn into an uncontrollable process without any rules and producible decisions. At the same time the quality of an artwork, including human openness and creative freedom, as much as meticulousness and honesty of personal position, parallel to the quality of the human life, which is a value being massively driven out by current society with the perspective of an outcome reached, performance effectivity and similar criteria derived from economic, commercial and medial strategies. The Foundation’s objective is to confront these tendencies with its humble resources.
At the same time, however, it is unquestionable that it is not possible for high quality fine art to consistently evolve outside of the life of the entire human society without losing its significance. Therefore, the second basic criterion of the Foundation is the social scope of art. From this perspective, artwork is supported anywhere it serves a purpose and effectively cooperates with some non-artistic activity – where artwork has an active contact with the public. This is supported by specific grants for public art projects, ecological art, social minority art and similar activities with a public scope.
The activity of FCA Prague is directly focused on the support of individuals and institutions working in the Czech Republic with the objective to remove the lingering residues of cultural isolation that existed during Communism and the short-sighted nationalism arising from it. An important attribute of its strategy is the orientation on contemporary art – that is not on the confirmed values of the past, but on actual liberal creativity, on undecided presence, open future and on the tolerance for new and different opinions. By supporting the implementation and presentation of artistic invention of individual artists, the Foundation contributes to the strengthening of the role of an individual in society and opposes levelling consumer tendencies.