Szilágyi András (szerk.): Ars Decorativa 15. (Budapest, 1995)
RENNER Zsuzsanna: R. M. Soelaeman Pringgodigdo, a műgyűjtő diplomata emlékére
ZSUZSANNA RENNER IN MEMORY OF R. M. SOELAEMAN PRINGGODIGDO, DIPLOMAT AND ART COLLECTOR R. M. Soelaeman Pringgodigdo was born in Jakarta, on November 20, 1934. He graduated from the Faculty of Economics of the University of Jakarta in 1963; his career in the foreign service started in the same year in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Later, as a diplomat, he held different posts in The Hague, Washington, Tokyo, Hamburg and Paris. In 1992, he was accredited as ambassador to Budapest. It was here that he met his end, on March 30, 1995. R. M. Soelaeman Pringgodigdo was no ordinary diplomat: he was tireless in his efforts to establish closer contacts between Indonesia and Hungary by means of trade and culture, as well. With unbounded enthusiasm, he took every opportunity to share his knowledge of Indonesian culture with the Hungarian public and to make his colourful country better known in Hungary. He often appeared in the media; on those occasions he always had some "curiosity" from Indonesia to show: either a kris, a topeng mask or some beautiful ikat or batik cloth. These pieces came from his own collection, as he had been a passionate collector of Indonesian art from a young age. As a true collector, he collected many different things, from stamps to modem paintings, but the biggest and most valuable part of his collection, and also the dearest to him, comprised Indonesian art objects. Here we shall deal with his Indonesian art collection only, an ample selection from which was on display in the Ferenc Hopp Museum of Eastern Asiatic Arts between July and December 1993 1 . This exhibition was an exceptional opportunity for the Hopp Museum, since its own Indonesian collection did not permit an Indonesian exhibition of a similar range. All the weapons in Soelaeman Pringgodigdo' s collection were put on show in a separate exhibition at the Museum of War History between February and July 1995 2 . R. M. Soelaeman Pringgodigdo started collecting stamps as a young boy; later, as a student, he became drawn to antiquities and the arts. Apart from his sense of beauty and his natural bent for collecting, it was his interest in history and Indonesian culture that prompted him to surround himself with all kinds of objects from the treasury of Indonesian art. When he began his collection at the end of the 1950s, collecting art objects was still rare in Indonesia. Ethnographical objects, still in use in the rites and everyday life of the surviving tribal societies of the archipelago, where generally not valued highly and were certainly not regarded as items to be collected. With its increasingly westernized values, the life style of the rapidly growing cities left no room for such objects. Nor were the artistic products of the great Javanese cultures much appreciated outside the confines of museums, and the characteristic objects of Muslim court culture such as wayang figures, instruments of the gamelan orchestra or traditional costumes, were, as requisites of a bygone form of life, preserved mostly by members of the older generation, and even then only in families respecting traditions. Of course, by that time a great number of archaeological objects, mostly sculptures of the Indo-Javanese period (2nd-16th centuries) had already found their way to the Batavian Society and then to the National Museum in Jakarta, as well as to
