Szilágyi András (szerk.): Ars Decorativa 25. (Budapest, 2007)
Events 2006
presented approximately thirty works giving a comprehensive picture of the artist’s ‘first forty years’, from his early metal sculptures made in the spirit of minimalist art through his designs for monuments and works for public spaces to his latest glass sculptures displayed for the first time in the exhibition itself. The show was opened by Dr. László Beke, director of the Research Institute for Art History of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. On 13 September, at the beginning of the theatre season, 19,h-century Japanese kabu- ki theatre moved into the Museum of Applied Arts with the exhibition entitled ‘The World of Kabuki Stars’. This show lasted for two months, ending on 12 November. With the support of the Japan Foundation, forty-one pictures from the rich collection of woodcuts held by the National Theatre in Tokyo arrived in Budapest, enabling the Hungarian public to acquaint itself with this distinctive area of Japanese culture and art. Besides woodcuts popularising famous performances and stars of the age, musical instruments, theatre accessories and costumes, too, added colour to the exhibition, which was organised by Mónika Bincsik. Exciting events were held every two weeks while the exhibition was running. Even the opening offered a rich programme. Greetings from Dr. Imre Takács, director-general of the Museum, and Furuya Masato, director of the Budapest office of the Japan Foundation, were followed by an opening speech by Katalin Bogyay, state secretary at the Ministry of Culture and Education. Yoshimura Fumi then performed a traditional Zashikima dance, which Kikuhara Koji accompanied on a shamisen and Tosa Roko and Tosa Roei on hand drums. The event closed with a lecture on Japanese woodcuts and kabuki theatre given by Fokumoto Kazuya. In 2005, the National Cultural Foundation’s College of Applied Arts launched an initiative in which it called on artists granted financial support to make new works of applied art to exhibit their creations at an annual display. In October 2006, seventeen individuals representing the classic branches of applied art enjoyed the opportunity to exhibit at the first - tradition-creating - event in this planned series of shows. The curator of this exhibition, which was entitled ‘Contemporary Hungarian Masterpieces 2006’, was Aliz Torday, who was also the editor of its catalogue. This show was opened on 11 October by László Zsóter, president of the National Cultural Foundation’s College of Applied Arts. The Archive of the Museum of Applied Arts contains approximately eighty photographs documenting the damage suffered by the building during the fighting nearby at the time of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution. Most of these photographs were taken by Judit Kárász, a photographer at the Museum at that time. She systematically inspected the building and recorded all the damage it suffered, both inside and outside. She photographed the dome from which tiles were blown off, and also the damage to the Glass Hall, the top of which fell in. She also took pictures of destroyed artworks in storerooms and in exhibition spaces, of the ransacked Reading Room of the Library and of shelves smashed to pieces in offices. A few pictures were taken by Géza Fehérvári, the internationally-known Orientalist who at that time was on the Museum staff. He, however, was drawn to the knocked-out tanks and other military vehicles in front of the building and to the slogans daubed onto them. His snapshots well document the facial expressions of passers-by at that time. In the knowledge of all this, our enthusias172
