Folia archeologica 49-50.

Kovács Tibor: A múltat idézve, előre tekintve emlékezzünk! 200 éves a Magyar Nemzeti Múzeum

EVOKING THE PAST WHILE LOOKING I O THE FUTURI 15 traditional acquisitions registers and the electronic collections management databases will continue to exist side by side for a long time. One possibility for progress in this field is to speed up the pace of the digitization of archaeological artefacts, a project that was begun a few years ago. - One truly significant breakthrough in the past twenty-five years was the creation of an independent book publishing by the National Museum. It is only natural that the first series that should be mentioned in this respect is the Catalogi Musei Natìonalis Hungaricì — Seria Archaeologica. An equally important series is the Inventaria Praehistorica Hungáriáé, launched a few years earlier and the more recently founded Opuscula Hungarica. (One similarly pressing task in this field is the revitalization of the popular foreign language periodical Régészeti Füzetek Ser. II whose publication ceased in the past decade.) Another definitely positive achievement is that beside Folia Archaeologica, the annual of the National Museum, two other journals - Archaeologiai Értesítő and Communicationes Archaeologicae Hungáriáé — are now also edited by this institution. Two other major series, Monumenta Avarorum Archaeologica and Magyarország honfoglalás kori és Árpád-kori sírleletei [Cemeteries of the Conquest period and the Early Arpádian Age] are published in cooperation with the Archaeological Institute of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. Finally, mention must be made of another series, the Corpus of Celtic Finds in Hu ngary, whose publication is also coordinated by the National Museum. The tasks in this field are obvious: to continue the editing and publication of the next volumes in these series. - The Hungarian National Museum has always played a key role in presenting various aspects of progressive national and universal culture, as well as of historical events to the general public. A glance at the permanent exhibitions of the past fifty years reveal that the exhibits on the early peoples of Hungary (1950, 1961, 1977) and on the history of the Hungarian people (1952, 1967, 1996) have played - and still play — a significant role in the contextual and aesthetic creation of exhibitions on a like theme organized in other museums since these were essentially modelled on the ones in the National Museum. The changes in the authority of the National Museum and the changing needs of the public called for a modification of the museum's exhibition policy since (he rising number of ambitious exhibitions mounted in the regional museums means that these institutions can hardly forgo the most important pieces in their collections. As a result, the number of loans from these museums that can be incorporated into the permanent exhibitions of the Hungarian National Museum is on the decline. At the same time, the increasingly widespread use of computers and, not unrelatedly, the appearance and spread of a new type of visual culture calls for novel aesthetic solutions, colourful exhibition catalogues and masterful CDs. It sometimes proves difficult to create the 'feel' of a traditional museum: the presentation of artefacts and 'real' relics amidst the various reconstructions, the virtual recreation of onetime environments and sound effects characterizing modern exhibitions. And, not least, to find the key to the mindset and needs of visitors representing different generations and coming from different cultural backgrounds. It is our hope that we will be able to achieve this in the case of our new permanent archaeological exhibition, "In search of past millennia", to be opened later this year as part of the celebrations of the bicentennial. - It is our hope that the thematic exhibitions of the near future will be created according to the same principles, as will the foreign exhibitions through which Hungary can participate more intensively in international archaeological and