Szilágyi András (szerk.): Ars Decorativa 16. (Budapest, 1997)

Kiállítások, események 1995-96

Among the almost 600 exhibits there were some which drew on traditional roots, and some which represented trends stemming from the re-interpretation of traditions. By way of historical background, Gabriella Balla augmented the exhibition with 100 items from the Museum of Applied Arts' own collection. One of the attractions of the exhibition, which remained open until the end of the summer, was that every second weekend porcelain painters and potters from the Herend Porcelain Factory at Herend gave live demonstrations. The Friends of Small-Size Graphic Works announced a competition for small graphic art works and bookplates on the occasion of Hungary's Millecentenary. Entitled 1100 Years of Hungarian Folk Art, this was linked with an exhibition of the same name, the material for which was selected from the Museum's collection by Dr. Hilda Horváth. The exhibition was opened on August 17 by the art historian Dr. Magdolna Supka, when the competition awards were issued. The exhibition remained open to visitors until September 8. With funding from the Hungarian Ministry of Culture and Public Education, three artists - Zoltán Bonus, Mária Lugossy and György Buczkó - displayed their glass sculptures in the Museum between September 4 and October 6. The exhibition was opened by Pál Miklós, a retired director of the Museum. The two-language brochure featured the ars poetica of the artists, accounts of their careers and a colour photograph of an exhibit by each of them. An exhibition which opened in September paid tribute to Arnold Gross, a contemporary graphic artist of outstanding importance and a member of the Széchenyi Academy of Art. The exhibition presented each period of his work (which extended over several decades) through as many as seventy very attractive works of art. Besides distinctive graphic works by the artists, there were also displaycases stocked with small decorative objects dear to him, and with the best pieces from his mineral collection. He even placed a large cage for his pet finches in the foreground of the exhibition, providing a unusual visual and acoustic experience for visitors and giving them an insight into his own world as an artist. At the opening of the exhibition on September 27, Kálmán Györgyi, Chief Public Prosecutor, and the literary historian Mátyás Domokos, Secretary of the Széchenyi Academy of Art, gave the opening addresses. With the participation of almost all the Museum's researchers, intensive large-scale work began to enable the Museum to celebrate, in a worthy manner, the 100th anniversary of its building's inauguration. On October 25, exactly a century after this event, two exhibitions were opened. Both required a multidisciplinary approach and multifaceted organizational activity, as well as the working out of a conceptual framework. The first exhibition received visitors in the covered arcades around the central well, while the second was staged in the cupola room on the second floor. The first exhibition, entitled Style 1900 - A great experiment of modernism in the applied arts, displayed seven hundred objets d'art under the direction of Emőke László and Ildikó Pandúr. On the basis of the method and high standard of the display, it can be duly regarded as a worthy conclusion, or even as the culmination, of the series of exhibition launched earlier and entitled "Periods in the European Decorative Arts". The second exhibition showed visitors the Architectural History of the Palace of the Applied Arts Museum, and included a great quantity of instructive and interesting archive material from the four-year period extending from the drawing up of the plans to the opening of the building. Following a speech of welcome by Árpád Göncz, President of the Republic of Hungary, Imre Schrammel, Rector of the Budapest College of Applied Arts, opened the exhibition. During the preparation and planning work for the first of the above-mentioned exhibitions, an new-type experiment was conducted. On the initiative of Elvira Király,