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

The First Fifty Years Fifty years in the life of an art museum with a collection interest spanning several hundred years is not particularly long. Nor is it long if we take into account the fact that Hungarian museums have a longer than two-hundred-year tradition behind them. However, the significance of an institution is obviously determined not by its antiquity but by the intellectual merit and accessibility of its collection. This is why the Hungarian National Gallery is uniquely important among similar establishments considered new: its collections document Hungarian history and the value-creating capacities of those who worked in the course of its centuries. In point of fact, this is the very achievement the Hungarian National Gallery has attained in its fifty years of existence. Its half-century history can be divided into two characteristically different periods. In the first fifteen years of its life, it was only nineteenth- and twentieth-century fine arts that belonged in its collection interest. Its collection was eked out to full scope when the institution moved into its current premises, the Buda Royal Castle; this was when the monuments of our recent past were united with the art-work material of the older Hungary: the collection of mediaeval panel paintings, sculptures and winged altarpieces. Following relocation, it took almost ten years to establish ourselves at the new venue and make it conform to museum purposes; it was only afterwards that arranging permanent exhibitions - the basic task of any museum - could be begun. This was all the more important because the first 800 years of Hungarian art had never before received the kind of comprehensive display that would have done justice to it. Having moved into the Buda Castle, the permanent exhibitions of mediaeval and baroque art were put in place. It is also a fact that modern and contemporary fine arts were afforded a "museum rank" when the professional activities of the Hungarian National Gallery reached full intensity. We are justified in saying that the work of the institution after moving into the Buda Castle first focussed on art historical and museological tasks; apart from arranging the location, ensuring its operation, shaping its communication systems, an order of work had to be determined that would serve the purposes of collecting, researching and displaying works from a period between the foundation of the Hungarian Kingdom and our own day. This was how the current standing of the National Gallery was established: being the national fine arts museum of the Hungarian State, and, as such, capable of carefully marking historical processes and professional standards, it has proved to be the most appropriate collector and exhibitor of the values of Hungarian fine arts. The gradual intensification and adjustment to current requirements of professional work defined the organizational structure of the museum, too; it was within this framework that the preservation of art works, based on conservation and restoration, was given a primary role. Honouring our jubilee, the papers issued in this yearbook provide insights on the daily activities of a living organization, and also document that the fundamental aim we had set ourselves in the 1980s led our work in a good direction, and continues to hold: "The Hungarian National Gallery sprang forth from the tradition of galleries and museums created to make Hungarian fine arts thrive and develop. In this sense, the adjective 'national' has a double sense. On the one hand, it means that the objects it collects, treats and exhibits are the common property of the nation. On the other hand, it refers to the historical mission of Hungarian galleries and museums founded at the end of the 19

th century." It is our firm belief that the coming decades are going to provide the Flungarian National Gallery with many a task and opportunity. Lóránd Bereczky Director General