Pécs as European Capital of Culture – some experiences
Zsolnay, Eights, Pelcl, Mucha and Others
MúzeumCafé 20.
According to the ECC official homepage, Pécs became Hungary’s No. 1. provincial museum centre in the 70s. That was when major collections were acquired, many of the present museums and galleries were set up, and Káptalan Street became ‘Museum Street’ as it is known today. The town is home to an Amerigo Tot exhibition, the recently renovated Zsolnay and Vasarely Museums, a Renaissance Lapidarium, the Martyn Collection of the Modern Hungarian Picture Gallery, the Endre Nemes Museum and the Csontváry Museum. It will be interesting to see how this year’s hype over Pécs being the Cultural Capital will effect the town’s local museums in the long run. The Large Exhibition Venue project would have originally involved mega-investment of 3.5 billion forints, which would have literally required rocks to be moved. The former County Hall would have been the basis, but in 2006 it turned out that the rocks below could only be dislodged with explosives, which would have affected the neighbouring buildings adversely. Then the investment was shifted to the site of the open-air theatre in Káptalan Street. Over the years that project also changed considerably and by 2008 an idea involving 1.5 billion forints remained, including renewal of Museum Street and the construction of a smaller exhibition venue, again at the County Hall site but without involving any explosions. ‘In return’, as the most expensive investment of the ECC, a system of halls to be built in the Zsolnay Cultural Centre will supplement the project – sometime in the future. Similarly to several other constructions, the exhibition venues were not built in time. Although in the middle of August, the chairman of the county assembly, János Hargitai, announced at the opening of the Bauhaus exhibition that the investment was completed, he could do so only at the reserve site, since no one would take the risk of displaying the works of an exhibition regarded as the arts flagship of the ECC project in a still damp building. So up to autumn Pécs had to make do with a museum-gallery infrastructure that had existed before. Nevertheless, visitors had the opportunity to see dozens of outstanding exhibitions. The head of Baranya County Museums Directorate, art historian Júlia Fabényi, regards the involvement of contemporary art in 2010 as being insufficient, though she has highlighted the Museum Gallery’s Günter Brus exhibition, Crossing the Borders, in early June. It was very successful during the Night of Museums, thus it should have deserved more promotion, she believes. “We started off the year in January with the international art biennale Meeting Point 2 where the works of artists from Arad, Osijek, Plzeň and Pécs were displayed,” says Árpád Gamus, director of the Pécs Gallery. He thinks that in 2010 a rather good choice, a review of past and present, featured in the town. This was followed by the exhibition Zsolnay Differently, which displayed works by Zsolnay’s nephews and nieces. “We wanted to present the Zsolnay family without any emphasis on the ceramics. Frankly I expected more interest, and the number of visitors didn’t reach what had been anticipated. Work was still being conducted at the end of the spring, Széchenyi Square, the main square of Pécs, as well as other public spaces were not ready in time. That largely contributed to the fact that fewer tourists visited the town in the first half of the year. In addition, unfortunately there was silence about the event. It didn’t get sufficient publicity, despite the fact that almost everything kept referring to the Zsolnay family.” The end of March saw the Czech Jiří Pelcl’s solo design exhibition in the Pécs Gallery. Then from the end of April the gallery featured Alfons Mucha – some 150 works of the Czech artist, often referred to as the master of graphic art, could be seen. The exhibition included lithographs, book illustrations, publications and photographs Alfons Mucha took of his models and which were displayed together for the first time. The items were selected from the collections of two Czech museums, the Library of the Hungarian University of Fine Arts and two private collections. The first exhibition that generated really great interest in the town as ECC was Munkácsy’s Christ Trilogy, which was displayed in the ceremonial hall, duly converted for the occasion, in the Louis the Great Grammar School of the Cistercian Order. It took a week to take down and to assemble the three paintings, Christ Before Pilate, Golgotha and Ecce Homo, and it cost 30 million forints to insure and provide the necessary air-conditioning, which was paid from the budget of the ECC project. The exhibition was not only preceded by great expectations but also some delay for unknown causes, but they must have been financial. The organisation was intrinsically difficult since the three paintings have different owners: the Hajdú-Bihar County Authority (Ecce Homo), art collector Imre Pákh (Golgotha) and the Canadian Hamilton Gallery (Christ Before Pilate). The exhibition was really unique due to the fact that Ecce Homo had not left the Déri Museum in Debrecen for 80 years, whereas the other two paintings have crossed the Atlantic several times. Restorer Miklós Szentkirályi said that the transport of the works was high risk. The containers weighing nearly three quarters of a tonne each together with the canvasses rolled on cylinders could only get through an upstairs window of the museum in Debrecen, so they were lifted through with the help of the local fire brigade. The pictures were transported by air-conditioned trucks in several rounds. In April Szentkirályi, who had led the restoration of the paintings a few years ago, predicted great success for the exhibition, since it’s a huge achievement to see the three paintings together, even though each separately had already been all over the world. Hungarian businessman and art collector Imre Pákh, who lives in the United States, was present at the opening in the European Capital of Culture. The billionaire recalled that Golgotha was owned by the Wanamaker family for 120 years. It was auctioned in 1989 when an acquaintance of his, Julian Beck, a.k.a. Csaba Bereczki, an American art collector/dealer of Hungarian descent bought it. Foreigners began to be interested in the painting, but since the fate of Golgotha was not indifferent to Mr. Bereczki he turned to Imre Pákh, who bought the work from him, thus it could remain in Hungary over a long period. Since then Mr. Pákh has been thinking of acquiring Christ Before Pilate. It is currently in Canadian ownership and as far as he knows it is going to be on sale in a few years’ time. He has made no secret of wanting to buy it if that becomes possible. Visitor numbers totalling a hundred thousand anticipated by Szentkirályi have not been reached. A month before closing, i.e. after five months the Munkácsy exhibition had been seen by 50,000. According to Árpád Gamus, realistically speaking, everyone is satisfied with these numbers. He thinks it is difficult to compare Pécs with Debrecen, the town that houses the Munkácsy paintings. On the one hand, Pécs is smaller and, on the other, a significant number of Hungarians from over the border go to Debrecen, which is less true for Pécs.