Szilágyi András (szerk.): Ars Decorativa 27. (Budapest, 2009)

God Bless Emőke László!

GOD BLESS EMŐKE LÁSZLÓ! 'You can take it on, can't you? You will do it, Emőke, won't you?' With words such as these, Pál Miklós, at that time Director of the Museum of Applied Arts, entreated and cajoled Emőke László, an expert researcher of textile art and one of Hungary's most eminent specialists in the field, who was then in her late thirties. He added: 'You know that this is very important for us and for the Museum. It would be the best possible solution.' On the basis of her erudition and her broad knowledge in her area, Emőke László was undoubtedly the person most fitted to the task proposed: the organisation and staging of the exhibition 'Historic Hungarian Costume from Budapest' at the Whitworth Art Gallery in Manchester, United Kingdom, in 1979, using material kept in public collections in Hungary. Earlier she had proved her suitability on more than one occasion, by staging, among others shows, a highly successful exhibition of tapestries from the Baroque age at Lausanne's Musée des Arts Décoratifs in 1969. And although her tasks ten years later were many and very time-consuming (as they always had been), she answered in the affirmative. She took it on and she did it, in such a way and on such a level that the 'end result' - the exhibition itself and the catalogue documenting it that was published by the Manchester University Press - rightly drew recognition from the general public and specialists alike. She took it on and she did it. She did not shy away from challenges, and she made the highest possible professional demands on herself and on her colleagues. This was typical of her and of her many decades of museum work, thanks to which she made the Museum's Textile Collection, which she headed between 1977 and 1998, into a workshop that was greatly valued and internationally recognised. In addition, she enriched the West European and Hungarian specialist literature with works that can count on the interest of art collectors and receptive members of the public, at the same time serving as indispensable textbooks for research and university teaching. Hungarian- and foreign-language editions of her most important works - Flemish and French Tapestries in Flungary (1980) and Aristocratic Embroidery on Linen (2001) can be found on the shelves of very many rich specialist libraries in Europe and in the world more generally. Many of today's colleagues remember the last, and perhaps the most impressive, achievement during her work within the walls of the Museum, during the years of her activity here. It was she who - in co-operation with Ildikó Pandúr - organised the exhibition which, in a fitting manner, completed the Museum's largest undertaking of the recent past, namely the series of exhibitions entitled 'Periods in European Decorative Arts'. This was the show entitled 'Style 9