Weiner Mihályné szerk.: Az Iparművészeti Múzeum Évkönyvei 12. (Budapest, 1970)

HOPP FERENC MÚZEUM — MUSÉE FERENC HOPP - Horváth, Tibor: The Foundation and Development of the Ferenc Hopp Museum of Eastern Asiatic Arts

consequence of the intervention of the Roumanian army, the Hungarian Soviet Republic came to an end in August 1919 and the old order was to be restored. The first exhibition was opened in 1922. Felvinczi Takáts devoted his whole life to the museum. He looked for and found friends and donators who were helping him to enrich the collection. Among them I should first refer to Imre Schwaiger of Hungarian origin and living as an antique-dealer in Delhi since the early part of the century. Until his death in London, 1940, by large donations of Indian, Nepalese and Tibetan antiquities and art objects, a new department was developing, all due to him. He was to us, the second founder of the museum. Many others also, mostly Hungarians living in Asia were helping us. Sir Aurel Stein, though never a collector himself sent us two precious Iranian bronze vessels of the 12—13th centuries. I treasure the memory of his visit to the Hopp Museum and the Hungarian National Museum. "I could never give up the urge to be on the road again" he said on this occasion. Felvinczi Takáts had a good sense to find resources even during the hardest financial times to make purchases in the art-markets of London, Paris and Berlin, looking mostly for such Chinese bronzes, jades and ceramics which were novelties, recently excavated and were to alter in a very short time our own ideas about the early dynasties' art of China. But Takáts never had a larger sum at his disposal. He regretted always that the Museum is very poor in bronze vessels of the Shang-Yin and Chou periods. But, on the other hand, he was successful in getting together quite a considerable collection of Ordos bronzes. This art was much in the mode after the writings of Arne, Andersson, Janse, Rostowzew and Salmony. They gave a new, a transcontinental aspect to the migration period from the Scythians to the Mongolian hords of Batu Khan and Genghis Khan. For this question Felvinczi Takáts showed a very great interest. He published several papers establishing connection between the Asiatic Huns and the Huns of Attila and on the question of how a great number of the archaeological finds of the Great Hungarian Plains are related to the art of Asia. Our little special exhibition in the next room, lent for the occasion of this conference by the Hungarian National Museum could well illustrate and prove these connections as well as the importance of such studies in Hungary. May this exhibition be also an in memóriám of Zoltán Felvinczi Takáts whose devotion, far-sighted and profound knowledge and fine connoisseurship which was so instrumental in the life of our museum. AU that he did for the museum was done in a time when the possibilities were very limited. So, a larger scale of development became only a reality in the past 20 years since the proclamation of the People's Republic of Hungary. Valuable donations from China, Korea, Vietnam and India made it possible to bring the collection up until our present time, departing this way from an old principle of the museums, just to collect what is old. We are also very thankful to our new friends and donators who were generously helping us where the need had been the greatest and by ourselves, we could do so little. Through the help of our Ministry of Cultural Affairs and our Embassy in Korea, with the kind cooperation of the Korean Institute of Cultural Relations, we could order a series of copies in original size of the wall-paintings of the tomb nr. III. of Anak, the tomb of the governor Tung-shou, constructed in the