Szilágyi András (szerk.): Ars Decorativa 28. (Budapest, 2012)

Events 2009-2010

FERENC HOPP MUSEUM OF EASTERN ASIATIC ARTS EVENTS 2010 In 2010, the main concern of the Ferenc Hopp Museum of Eastern Asiatic Arts was the scientific publication of its collections. A major outcome of this effort is a volume of studies summarizing the beginnings of Japanology and historiography in Hungary, as well as the Japanese collection of Count Péter Vay. The result of the joint research with the Japanese department of ELTE University is the bilingual (Japanese and Hungarian) book co-edited by Györgyi Fajcsák and Umemura Yuko, entitled Ukijo-e, Images of a Fleeting World. A Selection from Count Péter Way's Collection of Japanese Woodcuts. It is the second volume in the series Hopp Ferenc Kelet-Ázsiai Művészeti Múzeum Kiskönyvtára, Bibliotheca Hungarica Artis Asiaticae. A longstanding debt was liquidated when the Museum published in the edition of Éva Cseh some of the Japanese woodcuts purchased by Count Péter Vay in Japan over a century ago, in 1907, in addition to Umemura Yuko's study Japan as Hungarians Saw It The Early Japanological Works in Hungary, and Annamária Gáspár's paper Count Péter Vay. The Work of a Forgotten Missionary and Explorer of Asia. The reproductions of over 120 woodcuts are complemented by a list of books on Japanology and archive photos on Péter Vay's life. The catalogue On the Border of Two Periods. Persian Art in the Qajar Era (1796-1925) edited by Béla Kelényi and Iván Szántó was published in late 2010. The eighteen studies mapped for the first time all 18-19th century art in Hungarian public collections. The paper by Eva Jeremiás (Iranian Studies in the 19th Century: Changes in the Image of Persia Entertained by European and Hungarian Scholarship) explores the emergence and afterlife of Persian studies in Hungary in addition to the oeuvres of Ármin Vámbéry and Sándor Kégl. Miklós Sárközy's study, The "Long 19th century" and the History of Persia in the Qajar Period, discusses the decline of that-time Persia, the crises of the social, political and cultural systems prior to the birth of the modern Iranian state. Another study by Miklós Sárközy (East Goes West - European Tours of the Qajar Shahs in the 19-20th Centuries) sums up the European trips of the Qajar shahs and their influence on the basis of contemporaneous western and Persian documents, with particular regard to their visits to Budapest. Éva Jeremiás looks at the leading personages and works of 19th century literature and cultural life in her paper entitled The Revival of Persian Literature and Culture in the 19th Century. She discusses the depletion of the traditional institutions of Persian education and the foundation of the first school of the modern polytechnic type, Dar ol-Fonun. Mihály Dobrovits's Persian Book Culture in the Early Modern Age presents in detail the artistic manuscripts of 145