Collector Vladimír Uttendorfský has spent more than six decades assembling a diverse archive of art, historical artifacts, and natural specimens that span continents and centuries.
From Medical Student to Global Diplomat
Uttendorfský began collecting in 1963 while studying medicine, acquiring an Edison phonograph as his very first piece. Over a decades-long career, he worked as a gynecologist, obstetrician, and surgeon, spending more than 20 years practicing medicine in the Netherlands and the United States. Following the events of 1989, he returned regularly to the Czech Republic and served as a diplomat.
“I liked it, it caught my interest,” Uttendorfský said of his collecting habits, noting that financial limits occasionally slowed him down but that he retains joy from even the most ordinary objects. His acquisitions bypass rigid boundaries between academic fields, mixing contemporary Czech art with artifacts from Oceania, China, Japan, and Africa.
Life and Death in the Medical Profession
The collection reflects Uttendorfský’s background in medicine, particularly the dual themes of survival and mortality. One prominent display piece is a cross constructed entirely from morphine ampoules administered to one of his former patients. The small glass containers each hold one milligram of the substance, with the final blue ampoule holding ten.
“Medicine as hope and relief, and in the end it is death and art,” Uttendorfský said of the piece. The curator connects this dichotomy to his years in the delivery room and operating theater, pointing out that a physician might witness the joy of childbirth in the morning and confront terminal illness by the afternoon.
The Stories Behind Ordinary Objects
For Uttendorfský, the historical and personal narratives tied to each artifact outweigh monetary valuation. He contrasted his preference for storytelling items against traditional art collection, noting that a painting’s value diminishes if its only context is an artist’s preference for butterflies. Among his acquisitions is a dinosaur egg examined via magnetic resonance imaging to reveal a preserved embryo inside, adding layers of scientific value decades after its recovery.
The most compelling narrative in the archive centers on a makeshift toy from Kenya. During a visit to his parents, who lived in the East African nation for a period, Uttendorfský rode with a driver to a local village. He spotted a group of children playing in the mud, including a boy pulling a crude wheeled toy along the ground on a string.
“I thought it might be a car, it could also be a bird. It had wheels, he was pulling it on a string,” Uttendorfský recalled. After the boy fled when approached, the driver returned the following day with the object, having purchased it for ten kwach, equivalent to roughly one dollar. “That is the only thing those kids have. So he had just some T-shirt and otherwise he was completely naked. And that car was his only Ferrari that he had,” the collector said, adding that he would choose this specific object to take with him into the grave.
