Prékopa Ágnes (szerk.): Ars Decorativa 31. (Budapest, 2017)
Zsombor JÉKELY: The Museum of Applied Arts in 2016
ZSOMBOR JÉKELY THE MUSEUM OF APPLIED ARTS IN 2016 The main focus of the year was again on preparations for the general renovation and renewal of the Museum of Applied Arts (for an overview of the plan, see Ars Decorativa 29). The complete reconstruction of the main building of the Museum on Üllői Street will be financed by the Government of Hungary, according to a decree announced during the summer of 2016. This decision made it possible to continue work on planning as well as the preparation for the task of temporarily moving the collections from the main building. The Museum of Applied Arts will close its doors for three years during the summer of 2017, with actual construction scheduled to start in early 2018. Preparations for moving include a new campaign of digitization, which—along with some development of the Museum’s collection database system-— will enable us to better monitor the movement of artworks during the transfer of the collection to their temporary storage site. This digitization project also enabled us to publish a far greater portion of the collections online than previously possible. With the project continuing until 2018, the aim is to make every object available online. In other respects, the Museum still functioned as usual during 2016. There was an increased focus on developing the contemporary design collection, and a series of ambitious exhibitions were staged at the main building of the Museum as well as abroad. Our main permanent exhibition, Collectors and Treasures, which opened in 2006, was significantly refreshed during the spring: dozens of objects were replaced with new pieces, and two small multimedia displays were also incorporated, providing information about the acquisition of contemporary objects and about the reconstruction. The Art Nouveau period also remained a main focus of the Museum, and the participation of the institution in international projects reached a new level, particularly in the framework of the Réseau Art Nouveau Network. An overview of the Museum’s activities is given below. I. Collection development and research New acquisitions In 2016, development of the newly formed collection of Contemporary Design proceeded at a greater speed. A number of award-winning Hungarian objects were purchased for the collection with the help of the Hungarian Cultural Fund (NKA), including the Paprikum spice grinders by Péter Toronyi, the prototypes of a ceramic water purifier system by Gyöngyvér Varga (MOME), lights by the Inarchi Studio or a newly developed Hungarian game called Logifaces. You can learn more about the water purifier system in the study by Piroska Novák in the present volume (pp. 151-156.). The Museum was also able to acquire a number of other significant objects for the 159
