Acclaimed art historian Anna Fárová dies at 81

The internationally acclaimed art historian Anna Fárová has died. The daily Mladá fronta Dnes was the first to report on Monday that Ms Fárová had passed away at the weekend after a difficult illness; she was 81 years old. Anna Fárová is considered a pioneer in studying photography as a fine art, devoting more than 50 years of her life to the field. From 1970 she headed the Museum of Decorative Arts until she was forced out by the communist regime for signing the human rights petition Charter 77. In the 1980s she published widely in the West and her publications were credited with bringing Czech photography to international attention, popularising renowned photographers such as Josef Sudek and František Drtikol. Her work won her a number of important honours from the Czech Republic to the United States, including an Order of Arts and Letters in France and a Medal of Merit awarded by Václav Havel in 2002.