Szilágyi András (szerk.): Ars Decorativa 14. (Budapest, 1994)

FERENCZY Mária: Hetvenöt éves a budapesti Hopp Ferenc Kelet-Ázsiai Művészeti Múzeum

the proper sense of the term by the untiring ambitious efforts of Zoltán Takács.

7 During his directorship the number of the objets d'art in the museum grew considerably: the material of Oriental art of the various national museums was given over to the new museum. These materials came from a variety of sources, though, but were still nevertheless collected by the contemporaries of Ferenc Hopp. From the Museum of Fine Arts the collection of paintings and wood-block prints, bought by Peter Vay

% in Japan on government commission, were transferred to the Ferenc Hopp Museum. These were followed later by the Oriental objets d'art collected by János Xantus

9 in the 1860s and 1870s and kept originally partly in the Museum of Applied Arts, partly in the Department of Ethnography of the National Museum of Hungary. A number of objets d'art formerly donated to the National Museum - for example, that of Dr. Theodore Duka,

]0 the collection of Japanese combs collected by Attila Szemere," the collection of Chinese textiles collected by Olga-Julia Wegener,

12 and the objets d'art made by contemporary Oriental artists and bought by the Museum of Applied Arts at the world exhibitions around the turn of the century

13 - also found their way to the Ferenc Hopp Museum. The archaeological material collected by Count Jenő Zichy

14 on his expeditions into the Caucasus and southern Siberia between 1892 and 1903, although handed over at a later time, should be also mentioned here.

15 In such a way this small museum brought together the objets d'art amassed by middleclass art collectors with the infrequent purchases made on state instructions and those pieces donated by members of the high nobility. This museum is, of course, younger than the great Oriental collections of Europe, especially those founded by aristocrats; nevertheless, the Ferenc Hopp Museum is the only museum in the region between Berlin and Moscow with a building of its own, the profile of which has been restricted solely to collecting and exhibiting Oriental objets d'art and works of applied art.

16 A modest increase in stock took place between the two world wars, due partly to small scale puchases as well as to generous donations. Amoung the donors Imre Schwaiger (1866-1940) deserves to be mentioned first. This Hungarian-born art dealer in Delhi, who discovered Nepalese small-scale sculpture for the Western world, laid the foundations of an Indian collection of international interest in the museum through his donations of sculptures, statuettes from Gandhara and Mathura, Indian medieval sculptures, Moghul objets d'art, and miniatures, as well as Nepalese bronze statuettes.

17 The enumeration and review of all the donors would require a special study.

18 The growth of the museum's material was due first of all to the ceaseless and untiring efforts of Zoltán Takács to maintain and to develop the international connections of the museum; the growth of the museum's library was due exclusively to the review copies sent to him. He carried on correspondence untiringly with many specialists in Oriental art around the world, both in Europe and in the Far East.

19 The first (permanent) exhibition of the museum was opened in 1923, four years after the musum's foundation. This provided an overview of the museum's stock. This had been supplied from time to time with new acquisitions but essentially it remained unaltered until the end of Word War II.

20 For the centenary of Ferenc Hopp'

s birth, the tenth anniversary of the museum's foundation Zoltán Takács organized a jubilee exhibition entitled „The Art of Greater Asia".

21 This was a noteworthy attempt on the part of the museum to gain acceptance and a more substantial support from the circles then dominating cultural life in Hungary. During the siege of Budapest (in 194445) roughly one in ten of the museum's objets dart was destroyed. The building of the museum was repaired, and the museum again experienced slow development: the former