Júlia Király, Deputy President of the Hungarian National Bank
MúzeumCafé 12.
Júlia Király has loved art since she was a child. It was her father who first took her to a museum, but due to work commitments she has less time to visit museums these days. William Turner is one of her favoured painters and her favourite museum is the Rembrandt House in Amsterdam. “The National Bank could serve well as a museum – the stained-glass windows are the work of Miksa Roth, the ornate banisters were made by Ede Alpár whose brother Ignác designed the building, and looking out of the window I can see a building designed by Ödön Lechner.” On some occasions, like the Heritage Open Days and the Night of Museums, the National Bank can be visited and around 40,000 people see it annually. Júlia Király makes no secret of being proud of her office, though she adds that the office of the other deputy president, Ferenc Karvalits, is much nicer. “Ferenc is really good at art, a real collector. But if someone took the paintings by Mednyánszky, which the bank has owned for decades, I would immediately notice. I’m a Mednyánszky enthusiast,” she says pointing at two sombre landscapes on her wall. Her love for his pictures stems from when she was 18. She visited the Hungarian National Gallery every month to look at his paintings and when homage was paid to the painter with a large-scale retrospective she saw the exhibition three times. However, Júlia Király is not a collector. “Last year I went to an auction where some of his paintings were being sold, but bidding is not my cup of tea.” Apart from books she does not collect anything. At the same time Rubens is a family favourite. “I’ve inherited my enthusiasm for Rubens from my father. He would often say that Rubens was a 16th-17th century playboy.” Turner is another favourite.