Dobrovits Aladár szerk.: Az Iparművészeti Múzeum Évkönyvei 5. (Budapest, 1962)
HOPP FERENC MÚZEUM - MUSÉE FERENC HOPP - Major, Gyula: Memorial Exhibition of the Ferenc Hopp Museum of Eastern Asiatic Arts: The Art of Asia
from the new accessions we exhibited lacquer paintings of high quality, wood carvings, lacquered boxes and ivory-carvings. The graphic art of the New China was presented separately by a very rich and variegated modern collection of woodcuts. The museum is very rich in this respect. Its material was made up principally of objects figuring in graphical exhibitions organised in Hungary, and given afterwards to our museum. Thus the new Chinese art of woodcutting, developed under European influence has a select collection in our Museum, a worthy representative of modern Chinese art. After the opening of the memorial exhibition, an independent selection of Chinese and Tibetan paintings was shown also in the rooms of the Museum of Industrial Arts, so to say a supplement to the exhibition. It became the first exhibition of this kind in Hungary. Its publication will be the subject of one of the papers of our next volume. Arranging a memorial exhibition, the Ferenc Hopp Museum of Far Eastern Arts had first of all the intention to express its gratitude to its founder. But it also wanted to illustrate the evolution of a cultural institution established during the Hungarian Soviet Republic in 1919. From modest beginnings it has grown up to a respectable series of significant collections. In connection with this fact it should be emphasized that the museum redoubled its material in the last fifteen years, compared with that before World War II. The chief organiser of the memorial exhibition was Tibor Horváth, the present director of the museum. He has been in charge of this institution for ten years. He is to be credited both with the rapid progress of the research work and the gradual increase of the material. "Catalogues raisonnées" of the different groups of the collection are prepared under his guidance. They will appear in the next years. The organisation of the scientific depots and making them accessible is also his merit. Beside our two museums of Far Eastern art, the Indian one bearing the name of Ferenc Hopp and the other one for Chinese art, the memorial exhibition, with the respectable amount of its material is a convincing proof of the cultural policy of the Hungarian People's Republic, desiring to strengthen the mutual appreciation of the cultures of the far-away peoples and to promote the idea of the peaceful coexistence of different nations. W T e are bound to express our gratitude to the staff, Mr. L. Ferenczy, Mrs. E. Tóth and Miss L. Rásonyi, accomplishing a difficult task in uniting a most variegated material. The writer of these pages contributed his Japanese arrangement a good deal earlier. Our revered expert on India, Ervin Baktay resigned in the age of seventy ; his last duty was the solemn opening of the exhibition.
