Prékopa Ágnes (szerk.): Ars Decorativa 29. (Budapest, 2013)

The Museum of Applied Arts in 2011-12

5. Art and Design for All - The Victoria and Albert Museum

Islamic objects, to the current V&A contemporary design collection. Altogether the exhibition gave a picture not only of a museum which has supplied a model to all those applied art museums founded with a similar intention in mind, but of the first state-of-the-art museum to serve the needs of society as a whole, and whose innovative solutions were subsequently taken over by museums with altogether different profiles.

The exhibition featured circa 350 objects, most of which came from the Victoria & Albert Museum. These were supplemented by artefacts borrowed from other English collections, as well as from Germany (Berlin, Kunstgewerbemuseum). The Museum of Applied Arts Budapest also contributed a dozen exhibits. The exhibition catalogue was published in both English and German, with the cooperation of the V&A and the German Prestel Verlag. A

Hungarian version was also published for the Budapest exhibition.

At a time when the Museum of Applied Arts was on the threshold of a major renovation the exhibition allowed us to take the London museum, the first of the applied art museums, as a reference point and to consider not only the Budapest museum’s mission but to reconsider its original function as well. With the benefit of the Museum of Applied Arts’ permanent display on the history of the collection (Collectors and Treasures), the Victoria & Albert Museum exhibition gave us an opportunity to consider the common origins and the parallel development of the two institutions.

The patron of the Budapest exhibition was His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales. The official opening address was made by Zoltán Balog, Minister of Human Resources, and Jonathan Knott, the Ambassador of the United Kingdom to Hungary.

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