An Experience of Values House of Collections in Kecskemét

MúzeumCafé 35.

A future researcher surveying Hungary’s cultural history of the 1970s will not have great difficulty in listing public collections that were created by private initiative. There were devoted collectors and various channels of the art trade existed, even though they did not really feature at an official level. Official museology and the sphere of private collectors were two different worlds. Hence, the establishment of the Bozsó Collection in 1974 can be regarded as a miracle. Initiated by the journal Forrás, a thorough survey of Kecskemét as a specific cultural island in the 1960s and 1970s has recently begun. Alongside the local proliferation of art workshops, the moving force in establishing the Bozsó Collection as a public one was the artist himself, János Bozsó (1922–1998). His personality and mentality enabled him to realise a nearly impossible idea. János Bozsó never followed the usual beaten path. He did not join groups or interest networks. He painted with passion and faith. His artistic credo as an art collector can be similarly expressed – he rescued with passion and faith. He moved into his very first studio in one of Kecskemét’s most noted 18th-century listed buildings in 1957. The old Klapka House with its peasant Baroque façade is still where the collection is presented to visitors. The project “An Experience of Values – House of Collections” in Kecskemét and the development of the Bozsó Collec-tion have been implemented in the framework of the Southern Plain Operational Programme. The entire cost of the project amounts to almost 300 million forints of which about 255 million is EU financial support and the rest is resourced by the Municipal Authority of Kecskemét. The goals have emphatically included the promotion of visitor- and family-friendly local tourist attractions, as well as disabled access to exhibitions.