Urban history and fine arts on the ruins
The Budapest History Museum’s Kiscell Museum
MúzeumCafé 50.
Although many parallels could be drawn between the Zichy Mansion (see MúzeumCafé 46) and the Kiscell monastery and church complex, compared with the more centrally located mansion, the monastery (later also a mansion), with its essentially isolated and more difficult to reach location perhaps indicates a relative drawback – or maybe not. There are few museums in Hungary whose legal status, situation and collection have changed so often, where the rank, position and responsibilities of the managers have seemed so ambiguous, and there are few museum buildings in the country where every few decades the space for storage and exhibition has expanded significantly, without adding a new wing or new floor – parts of the existing building are simply added to the already useable area. The same is set to happen again in the near future. With the incorporation of the underground parts, an exciting new space will become available, as occurred at the end of the 80s with the addition of the church area, which today is arguably the city’s most fascinating exhibition space. The Kiscell Museum is part a much larger institute, the Budapest History Museum, and itself comprises two departments, the Main Department of Modern Urban History and the Municipal Picture Gallery (the next issue of MúzeumCafé will take a look at the latter). In 1935 Miksa Schmidt bequeathed the Kiscell Mansion to the capital. In 1980 it was structurally transformed into the Kiscell Museum. In place of the unified Department of Urban History, the Department of Modern and Recent Times and the independent Fine Arts Department appeared. In the 1980s the monastery building was renovated and at the end of the decade an old cherished plan came to the fore, according to which the church area could be refashioned as an exhibition space.