Ferenc Kazinczy and the arts
MúzeumCafé 12.
Nothing is more difficult with an exhibition than to represent a period, especially one so comprehensive, complicated and often contradictory as the age of Ferenc Kazinczy. The task is even harder due to Kazinczy’s personality, versatility and extremely varied career. In addition to artists’ thematic or retrospective exhibitions, open-air ethnographic museums and exhibitions displaying technical scientific development attract the largest number of visitors. 2009 is the year of Hungarian language and a Kazinczy anniversary. It is not easy to make this theme understood and recall it with objects of art. In 1810, in a letter to Gergely Berzeviczy, Kazinczy wrote: “History proves that where Good has taken root it was always Beauty which prepared the road.” The more than 150 exhibited items – works by Canova, Maulbertsch, Füger, Piranesi, sculpture by István Ferenczy, Károly Kisfaludy’s paintings, Goethe’s drawing, portraits depicting Kazinczy, his family and writers of his time, books published by Kazinczy and Kazinczy relics – are not only or not primarily interesting in themselves. They constitute an integral whole, which – it is hoped – is as complex and versatile as Kazinczy himself and his age. The long-term exhibition has become somewhat ‘semi-permanent’, rather like the theme and the age it aims to represent, employing a collection of relics and curiosities contributing, perhaps, to Kazinczy’s immortality. In 1828 Kazinczy wrote to sculptor István Ferenczy in Buda: “My Dear Friend, in this very month I will be fortunate to embrace my companion whom I excessively love not only for his artistic greatness but also for the loveable features of his soul. I hear from my associate György Stettner in Torna that my head is already cast in plaster. I thank you for making me immortal! Ujhely, 19 August 1828.”.