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

1. Title page of the catalogue of the Public Picture Gallery, 1883 competence of the Cultural Ministry in Vienna. Central administration led, on the one hand, to several just national grievances, on the other, to a certain degree of absolutistic-bureaucratic "embourgeoisement". Standing up as a result of the Compromise of 1867, the independent Hungarian Government conducted competitions to paint historical pictures for the National Museum. The National Council of Fine Arts was set up with 53 expert members to support the cabinet in the various matters involved. Half a century later, this body was to suggest uniting the material held by these galleries in one art-historical museum, namely: the Museum of Fine Arts. In the meantime, however, the growth and specialization of the collections of the National Museum in the 1870s had made their separation and the establishment of newer and newer collections from them inevitable. After the state had purchased the Esterházy collection, the Public Picture Gallery was founded (Országos Képtár / Landes-Gemälde-Galerie, 1871), which was followed by the partitioning of the applied-arts material (the Museum of Applied Arts in 1872). This process continued in the 1880s with the creation of the Historical Picture Hall (1884). PUBLIC PICTURE GALLERY VS. NATIONAL PICTURE GALLERY: THE PRESENTATION OF OLD AND MODERN HUNGARIAN ART IN MUSEUM COLLECTIONS An important driving force behind the establishment of an independent museum of fine arts was the effort to illustrate the development of Hungarian art or art in Hungary. While the visitor of the National Picture Gallery at the National Museum had been able to form an idea of the modern development of Hungarian art, monuments of old Hungarian art almost completely melted into the universal art collections. In rearranging the Public Picture Gallery in 1881, Károly Pulszky provided a separate room for old paintings originating in Hungary. A total of but 11 of these pictures were deemed to have been painted in Hungary. In his 1906 catalogue, Gábor Térey listed 18 works produced in Hungary, most of them registered as coming from the "German School". In the 1880s, motives of art history had dominated the arrangements of the Public Picture Gallery. The separate assertion of the motives of history and art, the establishment of the special Historical Picture Hall, meant a genuine turnabout with repercussions determining developments for a hundred years to come. Its modern principles were laid down by Károly Pulszky, who suggested setting up not a "Hungarian Pantheon", but a gallery made up of works historically authentic and valuable as sources. As a consequence of establishing the Public Picture Gallery, a special collection of modern works of art was set up. Therefore, by separating works of art from one another according to historical periods, Hungarian museology adopted the foreign practice of setting art-historical collections apart from the modern materials of galleries, the latter being defined as dating from after 1800. While pre1800 art was presented according to styles and schools, preferably with a view to illustrating the development of art, modern galleries were usually arranged upon national grounds. THE REORGANIZATION OF THE NATIONAL MUSEUM AND ITS NEWER OFFSHOOT: THE MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS A committee set up by the House of Representatives in 1881 drew up a proposal for gathering together publicly owned paintings in a gallery to be built for the purpose. The House adopted the proposal in 1894. Károly Pulszky elaborated the detailed plans, outlining the establishment of not simply an art-historical museum, but one with a collection of modern art, too. According to his suggestion, the museum would lay an equal stress on its "art-historical" and "modern" collections. The core of the modern collection was to be the material in the gallery department of the National Museum. These departments of the new museum were meant to follow the example set by the "living masters collection" first set up at the Luxembourg Gallery. This was the concept according to which the Museum of Fine Arts came to be built: the ground floor had representative spaces for its voluminous plaster collection, while the upper floor had two sets of symmetrically arranged skylighted rooms of equal ground space for the old and the modern collections. Soon after opening in 1906, the Museum of Fine Arts was critiqued for not supporting and representing national art to the desired degree. In accordance with the anti-historicist attitudes dominating the modern art of the day, the retrospective approach of the museum and its neglect for the motives of Hungarian cul-