Liberty masterpieces from Prague Museum of Decorative Arts debut in Italy at Miramare Castle

The Museum of Decorative Arts in Prague, closed since 2014 for renovation, has loaned 200 works to Miramare Castle in Trieste for the first Italian exhibition of the Liberty style. The show runs from June 23 to January 7 and includes 12 works by Alphonse Mucha, plus pieces by Gustav Klimt, Josef Hoffmann, and Otto Wagner. A highlight is Mucha's 7-by-3.5-meter watercolor and tempera on canvas decoration for the Bosnia-Herzegovina pavilion at the 1900 Paris Exposition Universelle. The Prague museum, founded in 1885, holds 200,000 objects and a library of 172,000 volumes, and aims to reopen in 2018. The exhibition offers a preview before the works return home.