Szilágyi András (szerk.): Ars Decorativa 27. (Budapest, 2009)
Events 2008
the Hungarian Patent Office started with the award gala, and was opened by István Kolber, Minister for research and development. On view from October 8 to 26, the annual exhibition was also supplemented by a special travelling show (FormaTura), which presented the most prominent products from the last ten years of the Design Award. Since 2006, the Hungarian Cultural Fund and the Museum of Applied Arts organizes an annual exhibition, which presents the work of those contemporary artists and designers, who got funding from the College of Applied Arts of the Fund. This annual exhibition presents a selection of contemporary applied arts, providing an overview of the field over the years. The exhibition Works Completed, 2008, was curated by Andrea Berg, and included the work of 25 artists. The one-month long exhibition was opened on October 16 by director Zsuzsanna Renner and by László Harsányi, Chair of the National Cultural Fund, as well as by Béla Tildi, chair of the College of Applied Arts. In the 34 page catalogue accompanying the exhibition, after an introduction by Tildi, every artist summarizes their thought about the works included in the exhibition. Apart from these annual exhibitions, a more ambitious project was also developed by the museum, in cooperation with the Hungarian Association of Artists and Designers. Titled Craft & Design - Trends and Tendencies of Hungarian Applied Arts, the exhibition was organized by Márta Simonffy, textile artist and the president of the Association. Together with co-curators, Agnes Urbán, the chief secretary of the Association, and art historian Hilda Horváth of the Museum of Applied Arts, she selected the material for the exhibition during a one-year process from museums, private collections and from the artists themselves. The goal of the exhibition was to trace the roots of contemporary Hungarian applied arts, drawing parallels between past and the present, and between handmade crafts and industrial designer products. Never before has such an ambitious survey and such a wide overview been attempted. The exhibition, which filled the entire ground floor gallery, presented over 600 works by a large number of artists. On November 17, after the welcoming speeches of Zsuzsanna Renner and József Pálinkás, President of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, writer Gyula Kodolányi, the editor-in-chief of Magyar Szemle (Hungarian Review) opened the exhibition, which remained on view until January 11,2009. On November 27, 2008, a photo exhibition was opened in the Museum, with photographs of the life of Mohandas Kararnchand Gandhi, to commemorate the 60 th anniversary of his death. The photos on display came from the National Gandhi Museum (Rajghat - New Delhi), and the exhibition was organized with the support of the Embassy of India. The last exhibition of 2008 once again focused on historical works of art, in particular on the efforts of restorers in preserving them. Revealing Trade Secrets - Restored Artworks from the Collection of the Museum of Applied Arts was an exhibition introducing the complex research and artistic work that goes on behind the scenes before an object can be shown in an exhibition. Curator Katalin E. Nagy, chief restorer of the Museum, winner of the Noémi Ferenczy Prize, selected works representing the history of restorations in the museum during the last fifty years. Starting from the salvaging of the Esterházy Treasury after World Wirr II, the exhibition presented the work of all the restorers' departments of the Museum of Applied Arts and the Ferenc Hopp Museum of Eastern 188
