Prékopa Ágnes (szerk.): Ars Decorativa 29. (Budapest, 2013)
Imre TAKÁCS: The Upgrade Programme for the Budapest Museum of Applied Arts
- notably Henry Cole, who was in overall charge of the cultural quarter - focused on training designers, polishing public tastes and raising the standard of British material culture. A century and a half later, the philosophy still flourishes in institutions which devote their collection and research activities to human creativity in art and design and maintain active links with such disparate regions as the Far East, the world of Islam and all regions of the Western world: these are none other than the museums of applied arts. This new-type museum set out to improve taste among the “lower orders” and, indirectly, to resolve social tensions by promoting the social integration of the working classes. Admission was free, and opening hours extended into the evening. (These were the same decades when revolutionary ideas fated to dreadful outcomes were also gaining ground.) The first director of the new institution, Henry Cole, was one of those British reformers who regarded the museum as more than a tool for education and improving material culture. For him, it was also to be a factor in social peace. Cole’s optimism was almost boundless. He intended the museum to “be like a book with its pages always open, and not shut” (Art and Design for All, ed. J. Bryant, London, 2011, 175.) His strategy for improving public taste, educating consumers and developing industry was based on the recognition of the social significance of models. The same outlook inspired Walter Benjamin to call the great exhibitions of the 19th century “celebrations of social emancipation”.4 In addition to providing enjoyment, they set out to create an inspiring and didactic environment for the arts. This did not dent their success among the public, largely due to the unprecedented quantity of man-made objects on display and the dazzling array of epochs, geographical regions and cultures. A contributing factor was the new-type museum’s school function, in two senses: educating the public to sophistication in consumption and running an art school where future designers would have constant access to a huge range of fine examples for their studies. In 1909, the Victoria and Albert Museum opened a new building facing Cromwell Road with the somewhat complicated but entirely appropriate name of “Public Teaching Institution for promoting and supporting extraordinary achievements in the Fine and Applied Arts”. Today, “promoting and supporting extraordinary achievements” remains the proper objective for a museum of applied arts embarking on a major upgrade. The Budapest Museum of Applied Arts has thus had to face the question of whether a refurbishment can give it a proactive role in shaping the future, a social mission and a foreseeable usefulness for the new generations of designers who will be directly and indirectly associated with it. In 2012, as the plans for reconstructing the Museum were being drawn up, we invited to Budapest a large-scale exhibition from the Victoria and Albert Museum which reflected an idea of William Morris, “Art for all”. Since the Victoria and Albert Museum was going through its own transformation, bringing the exhibition to Budapest was directly intended as the presentation of a model institution and its programme. It was a kind of cultural identity statement, and an expression of openness to everything behind the exciting recent development of the London museum.5 Curated by Marie-Louise von Plessen and Julius Bryant, this spectacular exhibition was an intelligent interpretation of the ideals and history of the V&A, and showed how a great museum of art and design, already 8
