Veszprémi Nóra - Jávor Anna - Advisory - Szücs György szerk.: A Magyar Nemzeti Galéria Évkönyve 2005-2007. 25/10 (MNG Budapest 2008)
LÓRÁND BERECZKY: The First Fifty Years - 50™ ANNIVERSARY OF THE HUNGARIAN NATIONAL GALLERY - Katalin SINKÓ: The Making of an Independent National Gallery: Between Memory and History
50 th ANNIVERSARY OF THE HUNGARIAN NATIONAL GALLERY KATALIN SINKO The Making of an Independent National Gallery: Between Memory and History* The Hungarian National Gallery as a museum of fine arts with a country-wide scope was established by an order of the Minister of Culture in 1957 (43/1957. M.K.7. [M. M. sz.]). According to the document, the new institution was to hold the Hungarian works in the collections of the Museum of Fine Arts, namely: the New Hungarian Picture Gallery, the Departments of Modern Sculpture and Modern Prints and Drawings, and would be "the independent national museum of Hungarian fine arts". Under decree number 2018/1958/III.9 in the following year, the Hungarian government provided that the Hungarian National Gallery would operate "as a national museum". No public information is extant concerning other circumstances of the foundation. Histories of museums usually render accounts of the inception and institutionalization of the collections they discuss. All Hungarian museums with a country-wide scope can be traced back to the National Museum. In its current form, the Museum of Fine Arts as a public institution is an inheritor partly of the former Public Picture Gallery and partly the painting collections of the National Museum as well as of the private collections of Pál Esterházy, Archbishop János Pyrker and János Pálffy. In like fashion, the historical precedents of the Hungarian National Gallery are the Picture Gallery of the National Museum and its department called "National Picture Gallery", as well as the work of Elek Petrovics, the Director of the Museum of Fine Arts after 1914, and the New Hungarian Picture Gallery he established. The fate of a museum cannot only be studied in itself or in relation to the changes in state cultural policies, for it is also an inseparable part of the history of art history as a discipline. Differentiation was a necessity in the history of Hungarian museum affairs, as it was throughout Europe. However, besides specialization, the idea of unity in museum affairs or the affiliation of museums with a country-wide scope had been present in Hungary from the outset. The question is how the general task of museums, i.e. the long-term maintenance of collective memory, was fulfilled in the given circumstances of Hungary. National archives and museums, to use the terms of Pierre Nora, are the means of transmitting national traditions, the "places of memory" (les lieux de mémoire). While Nora sees the role of these institutions in shaping a unified national memory, Moritz von Csáky stresses the diversity and parallel nature of memories in the culture of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy and its successor states. Particular at* This text is a short summary of the comprehensive study to be published in Hungarian in the 2008 volume of the Annales. tention needs to be paid to the events that have "dropped out" of collective memory in the course of time. Csáky brings up several examples of not only the institutionalization of cultural memory, but also the history-shaping role of collective "forgetting" in the Central European region. The making and re-making of museums and archives also bear witness to the changes in approaches to the past. According to Gottfried Korff, the history of museum collections reveals curators' view of art and history, as well as periods of "historical amnesia." At certain points of time (in 1919, 1950 and 1956), the life of Hungarian museums was particularly characterized by discontinuity, forgetting or efforts to re-shape social memory. With regard to the business of acquisition, it is collections of contemporary works of art that deserve special attention, as even 19 th-century museum administration responded to these by way of organizational changes, first and foremost establishing the museum of modern art at the Palais du Luxembourg in 1818. For a long time, Hungarian state and municipal museums had to meet a double requirement in their acquisitions: the concerns of both history and state or local-government patronage. It is obvious from the above that the history of individual museums is closely related to museum administration in general. NATIONAL MUSEUM - NATIONAL PICTURE GALLERY The firstborn of Hungarian museums was the National Museum (1808). According to the original plans (not of the building, but the institution), it was to house a library, cabinets of medals, antiquities, natural history, and a picture gallery. Not only historical portraits, but also depictions of historical themes were envisioned to be included in the collection. The first representative historical pictures were commissioned from Peter Krafft (Zrínyis Charge from the Castle of Szigetvár and The Crowning of Emperor Franz as King of Hungary). In 1836, the collection scope of the museum was expanded by of the bequeathal of the collection of János Pyrker, the Archbishop of Eger, which included works from almost all periods in the history of European art. In 1845, moving the Pyrker collection into the museum occasioned the setting up of its gallery section, separate departments of the General Picture Gallery and the National Picture Gallery. Apart from the new gallery halls, a copying room was also opened - rather modestly making up for the lack of an academy of fine arts. In the period of absolutism, the administration of museum affairs - like all educational and cultural affairs - lay within the
