New Exhibit Opening at Kampa to Celebrate Photographer to Royals

Museum Kampa will present an exhibition of one of the world’s most famous fashion and society photographers Sir Cecil Beaton.

The exhibit will include legendary photos of the British royal family, stars of the silver screen (Audrey Hepburn, Greta Garbo, Marylin Monroe), and iconic artists of the 20th-century (Salvador Dalí, Pablo Picasso, Francis Bacon).

The exhibition opens June 12 and runs through October 7, 2018, in the main building of the museum in Prague.

Cecil Beaton (1904-1980) was an official photographer to Buckingham Palace from 1939. His photographs allowed a glimpse into the private life of the royal family; he was knighted in 1972. He was also a prolific war photographer.

For several decades he worked for fashion magazine Vogue, and also created several Oscar-winning sets and costumes for the Hollywood and Broadway productions of, My Fair Lady, whose black and white women’s creations from the Ascot racing day, influenced the entire fashion world, including fashion icon Coco Chanel.

The photos will be seen for the first time in the Czech Republic.

“Beaton is first and foremost a great artist with a sense of dry British humor that lightly flashes through the photographs. At the same time, it is important for Museum Kampa that we continue with this exhibition in very good Czech-British relations, which we want to develop despite the reported Brexit,” says Jiří Pospíšil, Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Jan and Meda Mládek Foundation.