Conservation around the Millennium (Hungarian National Museum, 2001)
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IN MEMÓRIÁM DR. ÁGNES TIMÁR-BALÁZSY (1948-2001) "Only service that tends the cause of people can give value to life." (Sándor Márai) We have for ever lost such a value with Ági’s death, who sacrificed a better part of her life to the protection of art objects. We had known about her sickness for six years, still we were deeply stricken when she passed away. Defying her gradually worsening state, she carried out her work with an energy and enthusiasm that would do credit a healthy person and we could not believe that all this would end so abruptly. It is impossible to describe her colourful personality and manifold activity by dry data, still let us here give a review of her short career in honour to her memory. She started work in 1966, first for the Central Technological Group of Museology, then its legal successor the Restoration and Methodology Centre of Museums, the Central Directorate of Museums and, finally, the Conservation Department of the Hungarian National Museum. At the beginning she worked as metal, ceramics and glass restorer. She graduated from the Chemical Engineer Department of the Technical University of Budapest as a chemical engineer in 1975, got a doctor’s degree at the same university in 1985, and finally the PhD degree in 1997. The topic of her thesis was the analysis of dyes on textiles in museum collections. She joined in for Hungarian restorer training in 1974. From 1991 she was the leader of the object restorer training, which was jointly organised by the Academy of Fine Arts of Hungary and the Hungarian National Museum. She untiringly worked on raising the standard of restorer training and conservation in Hungary. It was owing also to her activity that this profession is no longer simply a craft, but has accumulated a significant scientific background. She was supervisor of art protection for more than 10 years offering help to restorer colleagues. As a lecturer on conservation chemistry and scientific principles of textile conservation, she was renown in the whole world and was invited to several countries. She regularly gave lectures on the course “Scientific Principles of Conservation” of the ICCROM, with the centre in Rome, from 1987 and in the Textile Conservation Centre in England from 1988 and her students will recall 7
