The Palace Gardens in Prague are surreal. The city is not quite a bustling urban hub, its age and dependence on tourism are apparent everywhere, but still, stepping into the enclosed area of the gardens with its baroque fountains and hedges and casual peafowl evokes the same sort of timeless, Lewis Carol absurdity that one feels visiting Hampton Court in England. The traditional performance of Moravian music and dance that happened to be underway when we visited added the simultaneous touch of both authenticity and banal production that is coming to characterize historical locales for me. I don’t mean that in a critical or cynical way exactly, I loved the experience, but there’s something necessarily put-on about intentional cultural-historical spaces.

The Kafka museum evoked even more powerfully in me thoughts and feelings about museums (as productions, as spectacle) that I’m still trying to think through. I think the the intentions behind the two museums are pretty different. The Kinemathek Museum is probably more explicitly intending to be spectacular, as this is completely in keeping with its matter. The Kafka museum is, rightly I think, trying to avoid an exclusively informative or idolatrous presentation of an author who probably would have revolted at the very idea of a monument to himself or his work. Regardless, I struggled in both places not to feel like I was at Epcot, Disney World. Maybe Disney World would be a lot cooler if there were more rides based on “The Penal Colony”.