Alinda Veiszer on opening the soul, an orangery and Asia
MúzeumCafé 22.
No Los Angeles gallery sold drawings by Ferenc Rófusz in 1981, though local connoisseurs would have snatched up images from his Oscar-winning, three-minute animation. Years later he took them to Alinda Veiszer and the TV programme Záróra (Closing Time). If Prima prize-winning Alinda Veiszer is herself approached and asked about museums she compares a crowd-pulling exhibition to the writer Péter Esterházy, contemporary art to physics and the Impressionist citadel in the former orangery of Paris to nothing. However, she has seen something similar to the latter in Asia where the street itself is a living museum – served with mango. “I dreamt of becoming a painter, lawyer, vet, psychologist or an actor. I can thank the unimpressed panel of the drama school for my university years in Szeged, where I studied German and communications, and for being able to start working in the radio and then television. “Curiosity is the common denominator. Our attitude to physics for instance deteriorates in school rather soon and for good. Yet if you approach it from the aspect of a fascinating personality, a tangible achievement or an invention it is immediately different. It is exciting to look around and raise exciting questions. Your freely inquiring self dares to surface again. If, for example, László Fehér tells you that his painting Little Boy was not sold at a Sotheby’s auction because the auctioneer had not prepared the event carefully enough, namely he had not assessed the circle of possible buyers thoroughly, the event referred to as a failure of Hungarian art becomes reinterpreted in the viewers’ minds. At present a most interesting question is how a museum can be made interesting – to please visitors while keeping scientific authenticity in mind. How can a museum be simultaneously visitor and specialist friendly?”.