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

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

turn-of-the-century art and Islamic art, were in place before the First World War.

These achievements helped the museum through the post-First World War crises, but there was to be no major expansion or spectacular architectural construction for a long time - nearly a hundred years. Nonetheless, the collections saw one last great period of progress, under Radisics’ successor Gyula Végh, between 1917 and 1934. The Esterházy Treasury, one of the most significant surviving aristocratic treasuries in Europe, was moved from Fraknó (now Forchtenstein, Austria) to Budapest in 1919 and put on display in the museum after 1920 (Fig. 7). In 1944, Pál Esterházy (1901— 1989) had the collection moved to what he considered to be the safer location of the

Buda Castle District. In the event, it was nearly destroyed there by Allied bombing. The remains of the Esterházy Treasury, retrieved only in 1949, were returned to the museum under the previous deposit agreement and have since been restored to form the third pillar of the museum’s collection.

It was also during the Second World War that Ödön Lechner’s museum building first suffered serious damage. The glass roof of the central hall collapsed and its stained glass was destroyed. The fine polychrome decoration of the interior was replaced in the post-war restoration with puritanical white paint. The coloured surfaces of the walls, the galleries and the foyer disappeared. Even more serious damage occurred during the fighting in autumn 1956:

5. Exhibition in the first floor gallery of the Museum of Applied Arts, c. 1900,

photo: Archives of the Museum of Applied Arts

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