What makes a public collection public?
Is the nation, the state, the local authority or the public the real owner of cultural artefacts?
MúzeumCafé 40.
Public collection – what does this expression represent? Let’s begin with the present situation of Hungarian museums and the aspect of the funding body. On its website (see: www.kormány.hu ) the State Secretariat of Culture at the Ministry of Human Resources has this to say: “For centuries public collections have played a key role in preserving national cultural identity and transmitting national traditions, and they have a great responsibility for maintaining and presenting cultural diversity. Objects of art held in public collections – in most cases also the buildings belonging to museums – constitute an inalienable part of the national cultural public property. Their preservation and augmentation are a fundamental duty and a responsibility of the government of any time for the benefit of present and future generations, its own citizens as well the universal human community. This duty involves the obligation of holding, increasing, scientifically processing and publishing works about the collections, as well as presenting and making them accessible for as wide a public as possible.” On thoroughly analysing the text, it is striking that already the first sentence should make one think, since there was no nation yet when the first Hungarian public collection was established. Thus the two words “for centuries” cannot refer to Hungary’s public collections (or even the earliest ones established outside the borders of Hungary, as will be seen). In other languages the expression public collection does not necessarily mean the same as in Hungarian or in Hungary. The point is however, whether the public has anything to do with the institution that is (also) funded by it.