“An exhibition is nothing other than a collection of objects suitably placed next to one another”
The history of the Transport Museum
MúzeumCafé 46.
“There is no University of Technology, no Applied Arts Museum and certainly no state which has a collection that can be at all compared with that of this exhibition, which will deservedly serve as the basis of a transport museum of the highest standard.” With these words Wilhelm Franz Exner, director of the Austrian Technology Museum and later founder of the Technisches Museum in Vienna, expressed his enthusiasm in 1896. Exner’s rapturous words were certainly valid at the time. Hungary’s 1896 Millennial Exhibition included carefully constructed prototypes of vehicles and objects associated with them, which were greatly appreciated by the public and decision makers alike. Today the Transport Museum is facing the most important turning point in its entire history. The article gives an overview of the history of the museum, which opened in 1899, as well as the formulation of its perspectives concerning exhibition concepts, focussing on consideration of the museum’s use of space. The museum’s scope of collection has slowly expanded over the years to cover the different means of transport. When it opened the initial display was rather limited – as it had been in the 1896 exhibition – to objects relating to the railways and navigation, as well as models of bridges. Collecting items with a connection to aviation was inspired by the 1910 Budapest international air race. The museum started to deal with vehicles powered by an internal combustion engine only in the 1950s, which was connected to the fact that the state applied administrative means to limit the ownership and use of private vehicles.