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

7. Opening ceremony of the new Hungarian National Gallery in the Buda Royal Palace, 12 October 1975. Photo: HNG Archive, inv. no.: 19430/1976/3 artists to eke out its Academic Council comprised of university lecturers. The idea of establishing a national gallery appeared in the proposals for the Second Five-Year Plan the Party Unit and scholarly workers of the Museum of Fine Arts submitted. In 1953, the idea of creating a national gallery in Hungary found external support in the extension of the collecting scope of the Vienna Österreichische Galerie. At this time, the old Austrian painting and sculptural material of the Kunsthistorisches Museum was set apart, as a result of which the whole building complex of the Belvedere Palace became an exhibition space for old and new Austrian art. The monuments of mediaeval Austrian art were moved from the Ring to the so-called Orangerie of the Lower Belvedere. From the beginning of the 1950s, two organizations directed the work of museums in Hungary. The Museum Department of the Ministry of Popular Education authorized action plans, while scholarly programmes were supervised by the Academy of Sciences. This dual control resulted in several difficulties, and was also wasteful. In the 1950s, museums were apparently not scholarly, but educational institutions. The assertion of the single ideology motivated the withering away of all formerly independent institutions of scholarly discussion. The role art history played at the Academy of Sciences differed from other disciplines; it seemed to be hardly as central as literature and history was. The Art-History Standing Committee of the Academy of Sciences was established in 1950, with its members representing the academic and the artistic communities. At the end of 1955, a decisive change took place in the leadership of the Museum of Fine Arts, Andor Pigler, the former department head of the Old Picture Gallery, being appointed director general. As elsewhere in the country in course of 1956, there was a thaw in the political climate at the Museum of Fine Arts. With the outbreak of the revolution in October, Revolutionary Committees were set at both the Ministry and the Museum. Other museums following suit, the Revolutionary Committee of National Museums stood up. In the muddled political and power relations of the period between October and December, many institutions became literally empty. The authority supervising museums, the Ministry of Popular Education, was left without a ministerial commissioner. Former appointees disappearing, a handful of officials, however, continued to work at the Museum Department. Plans were drafted for the restructuring of the administration of museums - these were later discussed by the Conference of Museum Directors at the beginning of 1957. According to the proposal, museums with a country-wide scope were to be reorganized as "autonomous bodies", supervised by the Council of Museums.