Cleveland Cultural Gardens

On Saturday, September 25, 2010, 5:00  PM, there will be a brief dedication of the newly installed bust of Czech female novelist Bozena Nemcova.  Free parking is readily available along East Blvd at the Garden’s site: 880 East Blvd.

With the return of Bozena Nemcova, the existing and original bust of composer Bedrich Smetana was returned to its original position atop the landmark wall and frieze depicting the migration of Czechs from their homeland to the United States.  Future restoration will bring back busts of educator and Sokol Gynastic societies organizer, Dr. Miroslav Tyrs, and Jan E. Purkyne, famed physiologist.

Besides the epic frieze and its four busts, the Czech Garden is noted for its statues of Thomas Masaryk, the first president of Czechoslovakia, and Jan Amos Komensky, an early (1600’s) champion of universal education. His book, Orbis Pictus, was the first to use pictures in children’s education, which he argued began in the earliest days of childhood.

Around the expansive oval drive of the Czech Garden, there are four more busts celebrating Frantisek Palacky, a historian and statesman, Anton Dvorak, the composer of the well-known “New World Symphony,” the Reverend Jendrich Simon Baar, a priest and novelist, and Karel Havlicek, writer, journalist,politician and liberal nationalist who favored universal suffrage, when few fellow liberals did, and wrote about the tougher aspects of nationalism such as economics.

The total of 8 busts (two missing) and two statues is unique in the Cultural Gardens, as is the new solar powered lighting system for the statues.