The new Transport Museum AZ IPARI ÖRÖKSÉG MEGŐRZÉSE author: VITÉZY DÁVID–ZSIGMOND GÁBOR Hardly any Budapesters know about the Northern Vehicle Repair Plant today, despite the fact that train engines were repaired here for 140 years, up until 2009. This industrial heritage, the atmosphere and unique spaces of Hungary’s once most important plant lend the place a unique character. Railway vehicles were first repaired here in the Hungarian […]
Parting with the illusion of having a monopoly on knowledge In conversation with László Köcze, the head of the archives of the Hungarian Museum of Science, Technology and Transport author: KARÁCSONY ÁGNES László Köcze is the head of the Digitisation and Documentation Department of the Hungarian Museum of Science, Technology and Transport (MMKM). He graduated in history and Central European studies from Szeged University. He was an assistant archivist and then an archivist in the Historical Archives of the Hungarian State Security. He was a staff member […]
The János Thorma Museum and the Bay collection The Museum of the Year in 2018 author: BASICS BEATRIX Like so many museums in the countryside, the János Thorma Museum in Kiskunhalas was founded on a local initiative, in 1874. Its main task as a public collection is to collect, preserve, study and research the historical and archaeological finds, ethnographic and anthropological artefacts as well as fine and applied arts works of Kiskunhalas and […]
Galleries doomed to decay Research on the county portrait galleries author: BASICS BEATRIX A project modestly supported by the National Cultural Fund was launched some years ago aimed at the research and reconstruction of Hungary’s county portrait galleries. In the first phase, the portrait series once decorating the general assembly halls of modern-day Hungary’s seven counties were identified and a home page presenting the buildings and the paintings […]
Like life 700 years of figural sculpture at The Met Breuer author: REGŐS CSILLA In his presentation Messy History? held on the exhibition Like life – Sculpture, Color and the Body at The Met Breuer in New York, Thomas DeCosta Kaufmann quoted a long list of historical sources and documented facts, based on which it cannot be established with certainty what factors were considered by the Central European aristocratic […]
Memories of the transient body Dance Archive of the Petőfi Literary Museum – Hungarian Theatre Museum and Institute author: HALÁSZ TAMÁS It is a cliché both in professional and lay circles that dance is an ephemeral genre, this being true despite the increasingly user-friendly technological inventions of recent decades as well as the lesser known and used traditional notation systems used to record movement. In the overwhelming majority of cases, dance performances are not preserved either […]
Private collection from artists’ legacies in a Kolozsvár archive (Literary canons and lists of remembrance) author: BARTHA KATALIN ÁGNES László Székely (later László Szabédi, 1907-1959), a child at the time, his father, Sándor Székely – a stationmaster born in Szabéd (Săbed, Romania) –, his mother, Emília Rédiger– daughter of a pastor in Szabéd – and his four little siblings moved to their house in Kolozsvár’s Hóstát area in 1914, before the outbreak of WW […]
Overview of Hungarian art data repositories author: Basics Beatrix The end of 2017 saw new regulatory changes in the Hungarian museum sphere. Ministerial decree 2/2010 (I. 14) on operating licences was replaced by governmental decree 376/2017 (XII. 11) stipulating new requirements. While it had been mandatory for museums to set up data repositories, the new regulation provides an exact definition for its content and […]
Lukács And Library author: Mesterházi Miklós I am honoured that MúzeumCafé asked me to write about the Lukács Archives and Library (LAK) but I fear what follows will not perfectly fit in with this issue devoted to archives. The sign, sometimes on the door and sometimes next to it said Lukács Archives and Library (also on the volumes published by the […]
Past and present Central European Art History Research Institute author: KOVÁCS ZOLTÁN A fundamental task stipulated by the Museum of Fine Arts’ founding deeds of 1896 is the locating, collecting, professional administration, scientific research and classification of cultural assets within its scope of collecting – i.e. Hungarian and European artworks – as well as the related material, visual, written, audio and other resources along with providing professional […]