Prékopa Ágnes (szerk.): Ars Decorativa 29. (Budapest, 2013)

Imre TAKÁCS: The Upgrade Programme for the Budapest Museum of Applied Arts

a success on the world scale, has developed a positive future vision. It also had direct current relevance to our own museum of art and design, the Budapest Museum of Applied Arts. The elements which ensure the modernity and success of the London museum - the advanced scientific infrastructure of the National Art Library, an intellectual environment encouraging contemplation and discourse, the continuity of historical exhibitions, the maximum exposure of previously warehoused art objects

in “visible storage”, the inspirational propagation of contemporary design and fashion output, the broad-based development of multi-generation museum education and not least the friendly reception of visitors, with gastronomic attractions and other conveniences - are all included in the plans to transform the Budapest museum. We can have no better objective now than to give pleasure, to celebrate human talent and creative power, and convey the joys of human imagination and work.

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140 years: soaring and stalling

...all that was stronger than its shackles was the desire: to be free.

Jenő Radisics

The Hungarian Parliament’s decision to found the Museum of Applied Arts in 1872 was a statement of intent by a country confident of its prospects. The main figures who had been urging the foundation of a new-type museum in Hungary were members of the country’s intellectual elite; unlike those in London (or even nearby Vienna, where the same process had taken its course a few years previously), they did not belong to the ruling dynasty. In the late 1860s, archaeologist Flóris Römer and art collector Ödön Zichy devoted a series of articles to the idea of a museum which could improve the uncompetitive state of Hungarian applied arts. The Hungarian Parliament took the decisive step in this direction in 1872 by approving a 50,000 forint fund to establish the new museum’s collection through the purchase of works of applied art at the following year’s Vienna World’s Fair.6 A key figure in the decision was Member of Parliament Ferenc Pulszky,

who had witnessed the formation of the South Kensington Museum close at hand

PUIillKT K A ROLY.

1. Károly Pulszky (1853-1899), art historian and first curator of the Museum of Applied Arts, engraving by Zsigmond Poliak

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