Image: ‘Volavky’ (1988) by Jana Moravcová and Luboš Moravec, Lužiny housing estate. Prague City Gallery, Prague
Work has begun on removing and restoring ‘Volavky’, a public sculpture of three stylised herons that has stood on a tall steel pillar in Prague’s Lužiny housing estate since 1988. The Prague City Gallery says the work went years without systematic care, and a conservation survey it commissioned in June 2026 concluded that the sculpture had to be taken down from the pillar and moved to a restoration studio. The photographs published with the gallery’s announcement, all taken on 10 August 2026, show the herons already suspended from a crane above scaffolding, with a metal-restoration workshop’s van parked at the foot of the pillar.
The treatment, which the gallery expects to run over the coming months, is intended to remove damage caused by time and by weather and to secure the work’s long-term stability. Once it is finished, ‘Volavky’ will be returned to its original site. The gallery has not given a date for the reinstallation.
The gallery’s restoration notice credits the sculpture to the sculptor Jana Moravcová. Its online collection database records the work under both her name and that of her husband, Luboš Moravec, describing the stylised trio as the work of the married couple. The database dates it to 1988, gives the technique as welding and the material as metal — a mixture of lead and tin — and places it near Lužiny metro station.
The sculpture was made as part of the artistic scheme for Jihozápadní Město, the large housing development in Prague 13. It has been in the Prague City Gallery’s care since the end of 2022 and is catalogued in the institution’s public sculpture collection under inventory number VP-0255, with 2022 given as the year of acquisition.
