Óbuda’s ‘museum quarter’, or where everybody’s business is even less anybody’s business
MúzeumCafé 46.
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 purposes function with different owners and funding bodies? “This city is a distant planet. Living here is not bad, and living here is not good!” Thus sang Európa Kiadó in 1986 in the courtyard of the mansion. The remark was more or less valid then and remains so decades later for the mansion seeking its place along with the square where it stands, almost remaining by accident, bounded on one side by tower blocks and on the other by railway tracks. From the remains of the mansion there was ‘a slice of the future’, the Vasarely Museum in the former storehouse, and ‘a slice of the present’, the Kassák Museum, as well as local facilities – a community centre, local history collection, district council offices and a stage in the courtyard. From the start, the ill-fated building was in the main allocated inappropriate functions, while today it is mostly a home for culture. The question is how the whole building can attract attention with its mix of exemplary institutes, its seemingly untreatable wounds, unreconstructable past given the lack of relevant objects and its history of quite different funding bodies? What can it offer? Is it possible in such circumstances to create some kind of brand? Although the Kassák Museum was not the first to move in, its foundation and opening set the seal on the idea that the Zichy Mansion would be used for cultural purposes. The Zichy Mansion and the square where it stands have become part of the district’s ‘Óbuda Promenade’ development project.