Prékopa Ágnes (szerk.): Ars Decorativa 29. (Budapest, 2013)
Imre TAKÁCS: The Upgrade Programme for the Budapest Museum of Applied Arts
tional architectural competition for the reconstruction of Lechner’s decayed masterpiece. The conditions covered preservation of the historic building; environmentally- safe operation; full redesign of the museum’s exhibition system to meet the needs of modern art conservation and restoration; design of a new wing on the corner area left inbuilt in 1896; and the layout of the building’s surroundings. m. The 21s'-century vision for the museum: “unpacking” and the Design Museum Collections and public monuments are the true teachers of a free people Gottfried Semper Although the principles and methods that shaped the original museum are still valid today, and retain their attraction, restoration of the late 19th-century condition is not a realistic objective. The collections which have accumulated over 140 years are today almost entirely confined to the stores, and providing public access to these is one way of building on, but transcending the past. Another avenue of progress is the presentation and propagation of 20,h-century design, and recent fashion design and design for mass production. Appraising all of the stored items and making them accessible - a project we refer to as the “great unpacking” - will suddenly reveal to the public a huge quantity of “new” art works. Even though most of these have been in the museum’s possession for a long time, they promise a truly new experience for the outside world, one which could attract an enormous surge of interest. Then there is the design museum concept, which will create something new and of real value, as well as filling a gap in Hungarian museology and cultural policy. The main foci of the historical exhibition will be the collections underpinning the museum’s international reputation: the Islamic Art Collection with its world-famous array of carpets; the Esterházy Treasury with its Renaissance and mannerist metalwork and textiles; and the internationally outstanding art nouveau collection. In line with the museum’s original conception, but for the first time in its history, the treasures of South and Southeast Asia will appear in a cultural panorama together with European and Islamic art. The display of historic furniture will move to the museum’s external site of Nagytétény Mansion, where there will also be a study department and “visible storage”. The series of exhibitions on style history and civilisation is planned to comprise 8-10,000 items (Tab. VI-VII). The plan for the physical arrangement of the permanent exhibitions has in most cases succeeded in expressing the course of art history, with spatial centres of gravity that correspond to the ranking of the collections. The links between the old and new buildings offer several different routes through the exhibitions. Visitors can either follow them by the linear order of chronology and geographical position or explore the dialogue among cultures through a freer 15
