Szilágyi András (szerk.): Ars Decorativa 22. (Budapest, 2003)

Diary of Events 2002

period of important changes in public taste. At this time traditional jewellery made with precious metals increasingly gave way to plastic jewellery. From 3 November and 29 November the exhibition Plastic: Material for Art, a selection of plastic jewellery from the Bíró Gallery in Germany, was on view. Organised by Aliz Torday, it was opened by Olga Zobel-Bíró, owner of the Bíró Gallery in Munich. Márton Horváth, a member of the Hungarian Academy of Arts and an important figure in contemporary Hungarian glass art, recently completed his sixtieth year. The presentation of his work was the aim of the mini-exhibition created, under the artist's direction, by Krisztina Kender assisted by Gábor Major and called Loosenings. The show, which was opened by György Fekete, a professor of interior design, was on view to the public between 18 October and 17 November. Earlier on, six European museums together successfully applied to the EU's cultural mission in Brussels within the framework of the "Culture 2000" competition. (These were the Museo Intemazionale delle Ceramiche, Faenza; The Potteries Museum and Art Gallery, Stoke-on-Trent; the Musée National de Porcelain Adrien Dubouché, Limoges; the Museo Nacional do Azolejo, Lisbon; the Deutsches Porzellanmuseum, Hohenberg a.d. Eger; and the Herendi Museum Foundation for Porcelain Art, Herend, Hungary.) The material of the peripatetic exhibition was selected by the participating museums from their own material. The Herend Museum, designated as the first stop on the tour, asked the art historian Gabriella Balla to co-operate in staging the show, and through her the Museum of Applied Arts, as the seventh museum. In this way the presentation of Hungarian ceramics art was based on the collection held by the Museum of Applied Arts, which then became the venue for the international exhibition in Hungary. Wilhelm Siemen, director of the Deutsches Porzellanmuseum, and Imre Schrammel, ceramicist and winner of the Kossuth Prize, opened the show, which was entitled Ceramics-CultureInnovation, on 8 November. In 1996 the Széchenyi Academy of Art's inaugural Arnold Gross exhibition took place in the Museum of Applied Arts. This offered a broad survey of the artist's oeuvre: it presented Gross the painter, graphic artist and collector, too. This event was recalled for visitors by the mini-exhibition Games of Nature, organised by Hilda Horváth; Professor István Nemeskiirthy opened the show on 3 December. The highly successful event presented things of interest in his oeuvre that in the earlier exhibition had featured slightly or not at all. Of contemporary artists, Flóra B. Laborcz was given the opportunity to exhibit between 4 December 2002 and 5 January 2003. The art historian Dr. Ottó Mezei opened her exhibition, Personal Infinite, which consisted of metal sculptures. The rich and varied collection of timekeepers at the Museum of Applied Arts contains more than 600 pieces that are rare. These include not only costly, decoratively executed applied arts artefacts, but also those intended for practical use. It was from this aspect that the Department of Metalwork approached the collection on this occasion, with an exhibition entitled The Sound of Time, which was opened by Dr. János Schiffer, deputy mayor of Budapest, on 5 December. The authors of the catalogue, whose title was the same as that of the exhibition, were Eva Békési, Olga Jenecsek, Ildikó Pandúr and Huba Vályi. The year 2002 was an important year in the life of Hungarian museums, since it was exactly two centuries earlier that the first Hungarian museum was founded. The Pulszky Society Hungarian Museums Association, the National Széchényi Library and the Hungarian National Museum came together to raise a memorial fitting to the illustrious anniversary, that of the establishment of the National Museum on 25 November 1802. At the same time, it traced the process by which, with commendable swiftness, smaller and larger museums came into being in Hungary. Of these institutions, sixty were given the opportunity to exhibit at the show entitled Garden of the Muses, staged in