Money and all that is required
Visual design of exhibitions in Hungary
MúzeumCafé 44.
Staging an exhibition is a complex job whereby it is mostly the curator – who can be an archaeologist, historian, art historian, ethnographer or a representative of another scientific area – is in the foreground. The word curator is borrowed from British-American museum practice and has become fashionable. Deriving from the Latin word curare, meaning to take care of, a curator in English is not only someone who stages an exhibition but what in Hungarian is referred to as a museum specialist, namely a specialist who takes care of a museum collection and who can also be involved in staging an exhibition. Another figure has recently also become important, the designer, who is often also in charge of the installation, though sometimes someone else builds the exhibition in line with his/her design. In Hungary, for a long time it was not interesting who made up the visual design of an exhibition, partly due to the fact that there used to be a special institute which organised and managed this task. From 1949 the National Centre of Museums was in charge of designing and installing exhibitions. Change began slowly from the 90s, similarly to the increase in the number of exhibitions – the latter has been considerable since 2000. The new practices in relation to producing visual designs for exhibitions can also be dated to around that time. 2003 represented a kind of breakthrough: the Narmer Architecture Studio designed two exhibitions for the Hungarian National Museum, which were of pioneering significance. It was also then when the experts of Narmer set off on a path which by today has resulted in them dominating the field of museum exhibition design in Hungary. Museum specialists, scientific staff and those who devise exhibitions have a great responsibility in the field of staging and designing exhibitions.