Czechoslovak Society of Arts & Sciences

Tuesday, September 29, 2026 at 7 PM
At Bohemian National Hall
321 E 73 St, New York City

Join us in celebrating the free spirit of our friend and SVUNY Board member, Gabriel Levicky, who passed away in May 2026 after a long illness.

Let us know whether you will attend or would like to send a message.
newyok@svu2000.org

Gabriel Levicky (1948-2026) was a writer, translator, poet, and cartoonist born in Czechoslovakia to Holocaust survivors. Inspired by the American Beat movement, he wrote and published his first poetry collection in samizdat. After signing Charter 77, he was forced to emigrate in 1979. He lived in Israel and then moved to San Francisco, where he was active in the arts, organizing poetry readings and publishing his work – a practice he continued after coming to New York. His writing has appeared in numerous publications both in the United States and abroad. His latest poetry collection, B(lack) & W(hite) Wet Paint Poems, is available online through Xlibris, Amazon, Borders, and Barnes& Noble. Gabriel’s cartoons and collages, known as GabLevages®, reflect his perceptions of the often-surreal life around us.

________________________________________
This event is organized with the support of the Bohemian Benevolent and Literary Association (BBLA) in New York.

A book presentation and lecture by Vaclav Zurek, PhD
Centre for Medieval Studies at the Institute of Philosophy of the Czech Academy of Sciences in Prague

Wednesday, MAY 6, 2026 at 7 PM
VIDEO RECORDING

To mark the 710th anniversary of the birth of Charles IV, King of Bohemia and Holy Roman Emperor, we invite you to a lecture devoted to one of the most remarkable rulers of the European Middle Ages.

Historian Václav Žurek will present the recently published English edition of his book Charles IV: A Portrait of a Medieval Ruler, exploring the life, reign and historical significance of a man who established Prague as a political, cultural, and intellectual center of the empire, including his patronage of monumental projects such as Charles University and the Charles Bridge.

Žurek will examine how the emperor’s idealized image was carefully crafted at his own court through rituals, writings, and symbolic acts. Situating Charles IV within the political and intellectual context of his time, he will explore the emperor’s exercise of power and its representation. The talk will also address the challenges of interpreting abundant yet highly partisan sources—and how these have shaped both Charles’s image in his own time and his enduring legacy as an “untouchable monument” of Czech history and national memory.

This event will be of interest to scholars, students, and all lovers of medieval history, political culture, and historiography.

Tickets: $5 (plus processing fee) are available through Eventbrite.
Seats are limited on a first-come, first-served basis.

Václav Žurek is a Czech medieval historian. He earned a double PhD in 2014 from Charles University in Prague and École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris, with a dissertation on the use of the past by the Luxembourg and Valois dynasties. Since 2008, he has been a research fellow at the Centre for Medieval Studies of the Czech Academy of Sciences. His work has focused on projects examining medieval rituals, especially coronations; the reception of medieval “bestsellers” in the Czech lands; and, most recently, political thought and verbal violence in late medieval Bohemia. He is the author of Charles IV: Portrait of a Medieval Ruler (Karolinum Publisher, 2018 Czech, 2025 English) and has published widely on medieval history. He is also actively engaged in popularizing scientific knowledge about the past.

The book is distributed by Chicago University Press and is available at Amazon and Barnes and Noble.