Value preservation and renewal

A conversation with art historian György Szücs

MúzeumCafé 35.

György Szücs was the deputy director of the Hungarian National Gallery, initially under director Lóránd Bereczky and later Ferenc Csák. From January to September last year, before it merged with the Fine Arts Museum, he headed the National Gallery as its acting director, a position he maintained with success such that now he is the deputy scientific director of the merged institute. Besides his managerial tasks he has notabandoned art history research and his work is prominent in relation to the Nagybánya artists’ colony and Socialist Realism. He often opens exhibitions, in Hungary and Transylvania, and he has written for the catalogue accompanying the Hungarian exhibition planned for Rome this summer. The museum’s medium-term plan was in place for up to 2015, but could not be adhered to last year due to crisis management, as well as increasing financial problems. With the merger last September, László Baán, director of the Fine Arts Museum, reviewed the plan and exhibitions which could be financed became part of a joint programme. Outstanding among these are the Gyula Derkovits exhibition planned for early 2014, which has already been under preparation for years, and an Endre Bálint retrospective opening this autumn. In line with the Fine Arts Museum’s strategy – according to which Hungarian art should be more firmly embedded in its international setting – priority has been given to such exhibitions as the forthcoming display in Rome on the theme of modern Hungarian painting up to the late 1920s and Allegro Barbaro scheduled for the autumn at the Musée d’Orsay, which will include a large number of works by The Eight. György Szücs confesses that the future demands an increasing amount of work, irrespective of his recent accomplishments and achievements.