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The Hungarian National Museum’s new archaeology exhibition
MúzeumCafé 44.
The curators, designers and installers of the Hungarian National Museum’s exhibition The Carpathian Basin in the Carolingian Era and at the time of the Hungarian Conquest had to face three challenges. They had to present eras painfully missing from the National Museum’s displays as a continuation of the long ago planned and completed in 2001-2002 permanent archaeological exhibition On the Boundary of East and West – A History of the Peoples on Hungarian Land from 400,000 BC to 804 AD, namely to adapt or at least relate to the concept of a more than ten-year-old exhibition. The designers of the new display also had to struggle with the space allocated, an L-shaped corridor with windows overlooking an inner courtyard. The third, major difficulty involved the era to be presented. In the history of the Carpathian Basin perhaps there is no other period so interwoven with post-hoc constructions, false emotions and spurious myths than the 9th-10th centuries. In 2002 On the Boundary of East and West already represented a major undertaking for the National Museum. Designed by the Narmer Architecture Studio, a modern, multi-functional use of space was created to present 400 years of history with the help of multi-media devices and experience-centred means. Yet the modern spectacle, the cultural conception of the exhibition and its historical understanding were not in equilibrium. Could this be changed? Could a new display be created in a narrow space dealing with an era whose mementos are the subject of emotional attachment for Hungarians and a period like the Carolingian era, which is virtually unknown? Could those disproportionate elements linked to public interest and education, as well as general and national consciousness, be balanced within the framework of an archaeological exhibition?