“Original, like the work of the Futurists”

Hungarian folk art exhibition in America, 1914

MúzeumCafé 45.

On 7 March 1914 Amerikai Magyar Népszava, a Hungarian daily published in New York, carried a report saying that the National Arts Club, which brings together outstanding art lovers, was to stage an exhibition of Hungarian folk art. It continued: “(The undertaking) is primarily due to Nilsen Laurvik, who in the summer spent much time in Hungary, where he became acquainted with Hungarian folk art, immediately becoming an enthusiastic admirer. He has assembled a wonderful collection for the club.” The opening of the two-week exhibition was attended by Károly Nuber, Austro-Hungary’s consul general in New York, and numerous prominent personalities including George F. Kunz, head of the Tiffany company, Madame Gadski, Adolf Stern, Géza Berkó, editor of Amerikai Magyar Népszava, plus many other well-known figures in the art world. The orchestra played Hungarian pieces throughout the evening. According to another Hungarian daily, the Cleveland-based Szabadság, the lesson of the display praising the “taste and skill of the Hungarian people” was that, following the German example, a market in America for the products of Hungarian handicrafts and applied arts should be created with government help. The National Arts Club was founded in 1898 by the poet, writer and New York Times art critic Charles De Kay with the aim of highlighting the arts, particularly American art. The club moved to a new headquarters in 1906, where it has remained to this day. The initiator of the Hungarian Peasant Art exhibition, Johan Nilsen Laurvik (1877–1953), was a Norwegian-American journalist, art critic and photographer. In the catalogue he emphasised that the exhibition was the first in America to display objects which up to then had never been seen outside Hungary.