Veszprémi Nóra - Jávor Anna - Advisory - Szücs György szerk.: A Magyar Nemzeti Galéria Évkönyve 2005-2007. 25/10 (MNG Budapest 2008)

LÓRÁND BERECZKY: The First Fifty Years - 50™ ANNIVERSARY OF THE HUNGARIAN NATIONAL GALLERY - Katalin SINKÓ: The Making of an Independent National Gallery: Between Memory and History

2. Room displaying the art of the Nagybánya artists' colony in the New Hungarian Picture Gallery established by Elek Petrovics in 1928. Reproduced in Petrovics's study in: Magyar Művészet 4.8 (1928) p. 605. ture were also called into question, and a purely nationally oriented gallery was called for. It was in connection with the exhibition of Marcell Nemes

's collection at the Museum of Fine Arts in 1910 that the view of the past determined by current artistic interests could be first grasped. The intellectual source of this attitude was Julius Meier-Graefe, the works of whom directed the attention of the curators of private and public collections towards modern French painting. However, the profound changes in attitude were brought about not by McierGraefe's anti-nationalist views, but by the novel type of approach to the past he consistently asserted. This approach turned towards the past from the present, and studied former art events in line with concepts of art deemed universal. Resulting from this approach, Hugo von Tschudi's Berlin and Munich acquisition policies influenced the collecting and representation activities of museums in Hungary, too. Tschudi and Pulszky had produced a joint publication: a catalogue of outstanding works in the Public Picture Gallery. (111. 1) In 1910, the Budapest Artists' House opened its exhibition epitomising the new kind of approach to the past outlined above. It displayed not only works by French impressionists and post-impressionists, but also those by the "ancestors", moreover, the Hungarian "ancestors": Mihály Munkácsy, László Paál, Pál Szinyei Merse, and Géza Mészöly, especially their sketches. As though in a nutshell, a method of appraising Hungarian art arose, in which "the total evolution of impressionist painting" was drawn up not in terms of art history, but as a narrative of struggles between generations. These exhibitions demonstrated the simultaneity of Hungarian art with the current art of the "centre". In the course of the ideological battles between conservative and modernist artists, the dividing line between artistic tendencies became the relationship with tradition, or, as Karl Scheffler, the author of Museumskrieg ( 1921 ) put it, "inherited tradition has been replaced by chosen tradition" from the 19

th century. One of the most important questions in histories of museums is the role cultural policies assigned them: whether they were to be treated as scholarly or as educational establishments. From 3. Marble Hall of the Museum of Fine Arts, 1915. On the walls, fragments of Italian frescoes acquired by Károly Pulszky; in the centre, the Kisszeben altarpiece time to time, different answers were given to this question depending on the prevailing direction of cultural policy; and the changing views always turned everything upside down at museums. The communization of private collections during the Republic of Councils in 1919 poisoned the relationship between museums and collectors. Museums were allotted the duty of carrying out the communization. A plan was drawn up at this time to establish a Museum of Cultural History from the material in state museums and artworks communized. In 1922, the Cultural Ministry was again reorganized, and simultaneously all museums were placed under the authority of the Hungarian National University of Collections - the name of which was later changed to National Museum to refer to the historical origin of the national institutions concerned. This formation was in place until 1945. The name of the body itself - referring to its traditional meaning of "universitas"- demonstrated that museums were deemed to belong among scholarly establishments. According to the Minister of Religion and Public Education of the time, Kuno Klebelsbcrg, museums, in order to fulfil their tasks, needed independence and freedom from daily political requirements. This was the fundamental principle behind Act number XIX of 1922, whereby Klebelsberg introduced the type of self-government academic institutions had developed historically into the running of major public collections. He treated art history more as ancillary to history. In this respect, he followed the example of the Ecole du Louvre established in 1882. The structure of the University of Collections, however, also made it possible to undo the traditional unity of collections. In 1923, Klebelsberg appointed Bálint H Oman as the director general of the National Museum. Hóman set new directions of development for the collections. Under his directorship, the exhibitions of the museum reflected Klebelsberg's spirit of neo-nationalism. Back in 1914, Elek Petrovics had been appointed to head the Museum of Fine Arts. According to his programme, the most important aim was the development of the Hungarian collection of the museum. By that time, it had become opportune to separate public and museum acquisitions. Various struggles were fought to