Prékopa Ágnes (szerk.): Ars Decorativa 30. (Budapest, 2016)
Zsombor Jékely: The Museum of Applied Arts in 2013-15
Imre Takács, general director of the Museum since late 2010, decided to step down from his position in early 2014. The following year was spent in a transitional state, with only an interim director at the helm of the Museum for most of the year. Deputy director Péter Siklós also left, while Zsombor Jékely stayed on as the director of collections. A competition to fill the director’s position in the spring of 2014 was unsuccessful. The situation was finally resolved by the end of the year, with the appointment of Zoltán Cselovszki as the new director of the Museum. Mr Cselovszki, an architect, had previously worked as the President of the Gyula Forster National Centre for Cultural Heritage Protection (Hungary’s national office of cultural heritage). Collection development and research Thanks to some grants, the Museum was able to purchase a number of important artworks during these two years. Most significant is an ivory statuette of the Virgin Immaculata, attributed to the workshop of Adam Lenckhardt and dating from the middle of the 17th century (inv. 2013.131). (Fig. 1 ) The Museum received further gifts from the collection of Magda Bácsi, including Chinese porcelain pieces and significant objects from the Zsolnay factory, as well as a rare tea-set made in the Vienna porcelain manufactory after 1787. A selection of her new donations was incorporated into the permanent exhibition of the Museum (Collectors and Treasures). In 2014, the Museum managed to purchase one of the highlights of the 2012 Art deco exhibition: a hand-painted ceramic stove designed by Jolán Cser (grant from the National Cultural Fund). (Fig. 2) A number of contemporary design objects were also purchased by the Museum (among others, the awardwinning Plié-set of furniture designed by Gergely Kiss-Gál). The process of restitution of unlawfully nationalized objects also went ahead: furniture and textile objects from the former collection of the Sigray family were returned to the rightful heirs in 2014. The publication of the detailed collection catalogue of goldsmith works from the Esterházy Treasury was the most significant scholarly achievement of the period. Edited by András Szilágyi, the 352 page catalogue publishes 160 objects from the treasury, with detailed catalogue entries and hundreds of newly made photographs. The Hungarian edition - which received the Opus mirabile prize of the Committee for Art History of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences - was published at the beginning of 2014; an English edition is in preparation. In 2013, the English edition of the catalogue of textiles in the Esterházy Treasury (being the second volume of the Thesaurus Domus Esterhazyanae series) was published, edited by Emese Pásztor. Catalogues were published by the museum for the exhibition of contemporary ceramics from the International Ceramics Studio in Kecskemét (2013), the highlights of our Art Nouveau collection (in Italian, Hungarian, and also in English, 2013-14), as well as for exhibitions organized by the team of the Ferenc Hopp Museum of Eastern Asiatic Arts (Japanese ‘Rouge et Noir’. Traditional Japanese Wear and Contemporary Flun- garian Jewellery, edited by Györgyi Faj- csák and Tradition and Metamorphosis. Javanese Wayang Puppets and the Contemporary Artworks of József Gaál, edited by Vera Brittig and József Gaál). In 2014, the Ödön Lechner centennial exhibition 142
