Prékopa Ágnes (szerk.): Ars Decorativa 30. (Budapest, 2016)
Zsombor Jékely: The Museum of Applied Arts in 2013-15
29 November - 30 December 2014; 21 November-30 December 2015 Each year, visitors were greeted with the sight of a mansion where each room contained a Christmas tree specially decorated by artists and designers. The banquet hall hosted small exhibitions, and events were organised each weekend of the advent season. Contemporary Hungarian Design - Conference, organized in cooperation with the Budapest Metropolitan University 27 October 2014 As a sign of the Museum’s interest in contemporary design, a conference organised by Budapest Metropolitan University was hosted in October, after the busy events of Budapest Design Week. Invited guests - designers, teachers, museum professionals - gave an overview of the current state of the field in Hungary. Lechner - International Conference 19-21 November 2014 In 2014 we commemorated the 100th anniversary of the death of Ödön Lechner (1845-1914) with a three-day-long international conference. It was organised in conjunction with the Lechner exhibition, but its aim was broader: to place Lechner’s architectural principles and planning activity on the contemporary European scale, with the opportunity for comparisons on a wide horizon, while also giving a chance for presenting the results of most recent research. The conference explored the context in which Ödön Lechner had worked: Europe in the second half of the 19th century, a period of great scientific and architectural change and development. The international conference was jointly organised by the Museum of Applied Arts and by the Institute of Art History, Research Centre for the Humanities of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. An organising committee was set up to coordinate the programme and the various sections (Tamás Csáki, András Hadik, Zsombor Jékely, Katalin Keserű, Magda Lichner, József Sisa). Altogether, four sections were organised, focusing on the role and architecture of European museums of decorative arts, on issues of orientalism in late- 19th-century architecture, on questions of architecture and technology, as well as on significant figures of European architecture, the contemporaries of Lechner. The symposium featured a number of distinguished international guests, and proved to be a great success with the general public as well. The opening event of the conference also marked the opening of the exhibition Lechner, a Creative Genius. Participants had a chance to see the buildings of Lechner in Budapest as well. Events of the Lechner commemorative year can be found in more detail on our website: www.imm.hu/ Lechner2014. The papers of the conference were published at the end of 2015 (Lechner in Context. Edited by Zsombor Jékely. Budapest, Museum of Applied Arts, 2015). Night of Researchers 25 September 2015 The Museum of Applied Arts participated in this popular national event with a series of lectures and behind-the-scenes demonstrations held after-hours. 156
