Prékopa Ágnes (szerk.): Ars Decorativa 29. (Budapest, 2013)
The Museum of Applied Arts in 2011-12
The Treasures of Sunken Ships - Chinese Porcelain from the Magda Bácsi Collection 22nd December 2011 - 15th February 2012 The exhibition was dedicated to Magda Bácsi’s collection of Chinese porcelain and Hungarian ceramics, donated by the collector to the Museum of Applied Arts. Magda Bácsi’s collection, consisting mainly of pieces salvaged from sunken Chinese cargo ships, covers the main periods of Chinese ceramics manufacture from the 10th century right up to the beginning of the 19th century. The collection’s underwater finds are supplemented by Chinese ceramics excavated on dry land, which takes the chronological extent of the collection right back to the Neolithic period. Pride of place in the collection goes to the Chinese porcelain that was being imported into Europe, the most outstanding examples of which - as is well known - ended up in the collections of Augustus II the Strong, Elector of Saxony and King of Poland. The curators of the exhibition held jointly by the Museum of Applied Arts and the Ferenc Hopp Museum of Eastern Asiatic Arts were Györgyi Faj- csák and Eva Csenkey. “Wherever the thread leads me" - Rózsa Polgár Retrospective 12th January - 19th February 2012 Rózsa Polgár graduated from the Academy of Applied Arts in 1967. She started weaving tapestries from the end of the 1970s. The exhibition presented visitors with a cross-section of the Kossuth prizewinning artist’s work covering both her more spiritual and her deliberately modern work, while at the same time showing how she has been influenced by the rich tradition of tapestry-making. The exhibition also saw the publication of a book dedicated to Rózsa Polgár’s life and work (Polgár Rózsa: Szövött kárpitok - Woven tapestry) written in both English and Hungarian. The work and what lies behind it - Károly Simon Retrospective 8th March 2012 - 8th April 2012 The exhibition and catalogue were dedicated to the more than 40-year design career of Károly Simon, the former director of the Museum of Applied Arts. The documents and digitized plans on display made a point of drawing people’s attention to the challenges and demands of industrial design. Most of Károly Simon’s plans on display were made for the Ganz Electrical Works and Medicor. The plans’ presence in the exhibition reveals Simon’s interest in the aesthetics of construction, and supports his claim that a design’s technical and formal qualities are two sides of the same coin. Art Deco and Modernism - Interior Design in Hungary, 1920-1940 16th March - 11th November 2012 The Art Deco and Modernism exhibition that opened the Budapest Spring Festival was the latest instalment in a series of exhibitions dedicated to stylistic periods that started at the Museum of Applied Arts in 1988. This major exhibition featured interiors and objects designed by the best Hungarian designers, artists and architects of the 1920s and 1930s. Starting with the classical Art Deco style of the mid-twenties, the exhibition took 108
