From The Eight through Vajda to Paris
Art historian Krisztina Passuth on pre-1990 ‘risky’ exhibitions
MúzeumCafé 28.
Incredibly, classic modern artists today regarded as mainstream a few decades ago were officially regarded as ‘underground’. Krisztina Passuth ‘with good perception’ selected artists lacking general professional acknowledgement, thus at the start of her career the exhibitions she curated met opposition from the museum and ministerial authorities. For her, working with Hungary’s largest museums, even the research and display of works presented difficulties which only György Aczél could help resolve, as witnessed by the myth built around him as the acknowledged all-powerful master of culture. The courage of the young art historian was reflected in the reception of the exhibitions about The Eight and Vajda, the presentation of Hungarian artists working abroad, their integration into the history of Hungarian art, which can be considered a milestone, and the use research and analysis had and still has today. In the first item of our series recalling old, emblematic exhibitions Krisztina Passuth takes us behind the scenes of three displays, two of which she initiated and one she had to put up with: after the 1965 exhibition about The Eight and The Activists, the following year’s Vajda exhibition in Szent-endre was closed down two days after its opening and György Aczél’s intervention was required for it to be reopened. Even the opening of the 1970 exhibition of Hungarian artists abroad at the Kunsthalle was called into question. The history of the organisation of the three exhibitions gives an insight into cultural policy under Aczél’s leadership, the former practice of museums. Openings became a kind of opposition event and art historians had to try to get some agreement about the fate of exhibitions with the politician known as ‘the master of life and death’.