Vadas József (szerk.): Ars Decorativa 11. (Budapest, 1991)
RENNER Zsuzsanna: Baktay Ervin, mint művészettörténész és muzeológus
selves were only interesting for the expert. In the other part of the exhibition, products of the decorative arts and handicrafts were displayed. While this exhibition travelled around the country between 1953 and 1956, Baktay organized an exhibition of SouthEast Asian and Indonesian art in the museum. Having returned to the capital, the exhibition of Indian art was again on display in the Ferenc Hopp Museum for two years. The last exhibition to the preparations of which Baktay contributed was the „Art of Asia" exhibition organized on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the foundation of the museum. All through his carreer, either as curator, art historian, university professor or writer, Baktay's greatest ambition was to transmit India's culture, primarily Indian art, to his public. As it is testified by his life-work, research and popularizing activity were equally important for him. In his character, the talents of the scholar, the artist and the writer, blended with a predestined attachement to India, created what he was the most colourful personality of Hungarian Indology. His colleague and friend Zoltán Felvinczi Takács was absolutely right when he wrote that Baktay had been taken to India by fate 11 . It must have been his fate that his career as a painter was to end and his artistic talents be dissolved in an activity that for him was more inspired — experiencing, understanding and transmitting India. NOTES: 1. Ervin Baktay: The Art of India in its Historical and Cultural Setting from Prehistoric Times to the Twentieth Century (India művészete a történelem és a művelődés keretében az őskortól a XX. századig.) 1st, 2nd and 3rd ed. Budapest, 1958, 1963, 1981. In German: Ervin Baktay: Die Kunst Indiens. Budapest, Terra-Verl. 1963. 2. Ervin Baktay: Buddhism and Indian Art. Paper contributed to the first session of the symposium on ,3uddhism's Contribution to Art, Letters and Philosophy" arranged from November 26th to 29th, 1956, in New Delhi, by the Working Committee for the 2500th Buddha Jayanti, Government of India, in collaboration with the UNESCO, to commemorate the 2500th anniversary of the Parinirvana of the Buddha. 3. Ervin Baktay: Indian Stone Sculpture in the Budapest Museum of Eastern Asiatic Art. Acta Orientalia Hungarica, Tom. III. Fase. 1—2. pp. 135—165. Ervin Baktay: Recent Acquisitions of the Museum of Eastern Asiatic Arts in Budapest. Acta Orientalia Hungarica, Tom. I. Fase. 1. pp. 191— 212. Ervin Baktay: Nepalese Metal Sculpture in the Museum of Eastern Asiatic Arts (Nepáli fémplasztika a Keletázsiai Művészeti Múzeumban.) Az Iparművészeti Múzeum Évkönyvei, II, 1955. pp. 291—304. Ervin Baktay: Mughal and Rajput Paintings in the Museum of Eastern Asiatic Art (Mogul és rádzsput festmények a Keletázsiai Művészeti Múzeumban.) Az Iparművészeti Múzeum Évkönyvei, I. 1954. pp. 42—59. 4. Zoltán Takáts: The Francis Hopp Museum of Eastern Asiatic Art. Repr. from the periodical Far East, 1936. p. 14. and The Art of the East (A Kelet művészete.) 5th ed. Budapest, 1934. p. 15. 5. Sivaramamurti, C: Geographical and Chronological Factors in Indian Iconography. Ancient India, No. 6. Jan. 1950. 6. Edit Tóth: The Art of Nepal in the Ferenc Hopp Museum of Eastern Asiatic Arts (Nepál művészete a Hopp Ferenc Keletázsiai Művészeti Múzeumban.) Budapest, 1963. 7. Card no. 52.180.1. of the Ferenc Hopp Museum of Eastern Asiatic Arts. 8. Card no. 57.35. of the Ferenc Hopp Museum of Eastern Asiatic Arts. 9. See note 4. 10. Sketch for the arrangement of the Indian exhibition, 13th Jan. 1950. Documentation department of the Ferenc Hopp Museum of Eastern Asiatic Arts. 11. Obituary for Ervin Baktay's death by Zoltán Felvinczi Takács. In: Magyar Nemzet, 15th May, 1963.
