In the wake of the ancient world for a hundred years
The Collection of Classical Antiquities, Museum of Fine Arts
MúzeumCafé 9.
Law VIII adopted by the Hungarian Parliament in 1896 decreed the establishment of the Fine Arts Museum. The building was inaugurated by Emperor Franz Joseph on 1 December 1906. The core of the exhibition comprised the private collections of 17th and 18th-century aristocrats as well as other European paintings and graphic art. On behalf of the government Károly Pulszky supplemented the compilation in 1894-95 by purchasing prominent European paintings, graphic art, sculpture and frescos. Pulszky also bought some antiquities which remained for a while in the storerooms of the new museum. Ancient European art was exhibited with the help of plaster copies of sculptures in the ground-floor halls. In 1908 the museum purchased 135 Greek and Roman marble sculptures, and in 1914 some 650 ancient terracotta items from the noted Munich collector, Paul Arndt. An art historian of classical antiquities, Antal Hekler, was appointed head of the Collection of Antique Sculpture in 1914. Hekler set up the first permanent exhibition of ancient art. In 1943 classical antiquities from non-Hungarian sites kept in the Hungarian National Museum were moved to the Collection of Classical Antiquities. Those objects survived the bombing in boxes. In 1947, János György Szilágyi, who had become an unpaid trainee at the museum in 1941, opened them. Szilágyi carried on the work of Pulszky and Hekler, and with colleagues such as László Castiglione, Miklós Szabó and Árpád Miklós Nagy he increased the Collection of Classical Antiquities to some 5500 items by systematic and purposeful acquisitions between 1947 and 2008.