“If God and the minister of national economy want it so”
Marcell Jankovics, head of the Hungarian National Cultural Fund
MúzeumCafé 21.
NKA – three letters which can be seen on most exhibition invitations and catalogues, as well as on the published material of theatres, concerts and journals. They stand for National Cultural Fund, an institution which has helped facilitate most cultural events in Hungary since 1993. It is an independent fund established to keep a distance from the state, to be professionally operated with its allocation of grants and not to be dependent on the financial state of the budget. Can such distance be maintained at a time of cut-backs affecting all areas of life? What means does the National Cultural Fund have to take the edge off regional, generation and social inequalities, which also can be experienced in culture? MuseumCafé talked to the Fund’s president Marcell Jankovics, who began his work by establishing a new medium-term strategy. “Minister Miklós Réthelyi is the official president of NKA and he appoints someone to represent him. This means I must follow his guidelines. At the moment the Fund’s role does not seem to be changing. I am putting it like that because before my appointment there were rumours about doing away with the Fund or perhaps operating it in a different way; moreover, there are still people involved with cultural policy who have different ideas as compared to the present. They think that the Fund would work better in a regional structure. This was already raised between 1998 and 2002 when it seemed that besides a national top body Hungary’s regions would have had decision-making bodies deciding about grants. That was opposed because it would make the system far more expensive and professionalism would also suffer. Now 150 people work in 17 boards with 6-8 people in each. Should regional boards be set up we would have to count on many trustees in the interest of professional authenticity, with at least four people in each area. On the one hand this would increase costs and on the other a lack of experts would emerge, since the trustees must change. Yet if collective boards were to be set up whereby one trustee at most would represent an area of culture then lobby interests would increase and professionalism would suffer. Much depends on who is in the boards. Of course, politics has always had a role in that. A new trustee is included in a board when someone’s mandate expires. Half the trustees are appointed by the minister, the other half by the profession. A more striking political movement can be experienced in the case of museums, because the appointment of museum directors affects the operation of the board. Many of the present trustees are appointed until 2013. I accept that the minister in the sphere of his authority would like to see his own people on the boards as soon as possible. But I would keep the trustees delegated by the profession. I must add that among those appointed by the minister there are some I regard as excellent and honest professionals, and I was able to work with them in the board already 12 years ago. I would be pleased if I was listened to in this matter. It was quite deliberate when I announced that I didn’t intend to turn the system upside down.”