A new attraction in the land of the pyramids Tarek Sayed Tawfik Ahmed, director-general of the Grand Egyptian Museum MúzeumCafé 46. author: Anna Huth The Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM), being constructed in the vicinity of Cairo, is currently the largest museum development project in the world. In the complex, which is devoted to Egyptian civilisation, apart from a permanent exhibition covering an area of 24,000 sq. metres, there will be restorers’ workshops and storerooms, a special museum for children, […]
MúzeumCafé Award 2014 Rita Dabi-Farkas, museum education specialist, Ludwig Museum – Museum of Contemporary Art MúzeumCafé 46. author: Gábor Martos, Judit Jankó Ladies and Gentlemen, We are marking a small, but for us significant, anniversary. We have gathered to present the MúzeumCafé Award for the fifth time. The main criteria behind the whole concept of MúzeumCafé and, correspondingly, of assigning the MúzeumCafé Award are ‘pointing forward’ and initiative – that is the basis on which the editorial […]
Óbuda’s ‘museum quarter’, or where everybody’s business is even less anybody’s business MúzeumCafé 46. author: Emőke Gréczi It is not generally known when the Zichy Mansion actually was a mansion and how it is that museums have been occupying it since the 70s. Or why a Baroque building became one of Hungary’s centres for showcasing the avant-garde. What secrets lie hidden here and how can a partly ruined building adapted for temporary […]
“An exhibition is nothing other than a collection of objects suitably placed next to one another” The history of the Transport Museum MúzeumCafé 46. author: Zsuzsa Frisnyák, historian and museologist, senior member of the Institute of History of the Academy of Sciences’ Humanities Research Centre “There is no University of Technology, no Applied Arts Museum and certainly no state which has a collection that can be at all compared with that of this exhibition, which will deservedly serve as the basis of a transport museum of the highest standard.” With these words Wilhelm Franz Exner, director of the Austrian Technology […]
Museum architecture between the two world wars MúzeumCafé 46. author: Beatrix Basics The history of architecture in the interwar period can be dated to the deaths of two outstanding architects, Ödön Lechner (d 1914) and Béla Lajta (d 1920). The quarter century was characterised by a multiplicity of styles, which was quite noticeable in every area of architecture. Museums represented a particular style of public building. After […]
What is a museum today? Plans, dreams and tasks following the Liget Budapest international design competition MúzeumCafé 46. author: Dániel Kovács, art historian, manager of the MOME Project and Development Office Liget Budapest has passed an important milestone. In the framework of investment announced in 2011 whereby six national museums would move to the regenerated City Park, the largest architectural design competition in Hungary’s history has taken place. Among the 470 submissions, winners were announced ‘only’ for designs for the Photography Museum, which will move from […]
Gábor Kozák’s collection at the ArtMill MúzeumCafé 46. author: Noémi Szabó, art historian The contemporary fine arts private collection of Gábor Kozák has been exhibited several times in recent years, presenting its current state, main themes and evolution. From March 2015, parts of the collection, selected by two curators, can be seen in Szentendre’s ArtMill. Two different perspectives are applied to the collection, which now contains 240 items, […]
How will it be constructed? The Liget Budapest International Architectural Design Competition MúzeumCafé 46. author: Balázs Jelinek, design competition project manager, Városliget Ltd Not for a hundred years has an architectural design competition been announced in Hungary that has attracted such significant international and domestic interest. The aim of the open competition was to offer the opportunity for architects to demonstrate what kind of museum buildings could be constructed in Budapest’s City Park. The competition, involving total prize […]
On the history of the Museum of Fine Arts’ collection of plaster copies MúzeumCafé 46. author: Zsófia Bognár and Andrea Rózsavölgyi, art historians, Museum of Fine Arts Since 1945 one of the unresolved issues in the collecting strategy of the Fine Arts Museum has concerned the fate of the plaster copies. The direct parallel and antecedents of the museum’s collection of medieval and Renaissance plaster copies were the collections which had appeared in European and American museums in the course of the […]
The formation of the sculptural content and painting in the Museum of Fine Arts’ Romanesque Hall MúzeumCafé 46. author: Júlia Katona, art historian, Museum of Fine Arts The Romanesque Hall contains the Fine Arts Museum’s most impressive, fully painted wall space, yet almost from the start it was to experience an adverse fate. It fulfilled its original function only for a short time, occupying a marginal position within the museum, and with the closure following World War II it remained unchanged. The […]