Czére Andrea szerk.: A Szépművészeti Múzeum közleményei (Budapest, 2008)
ANNUAL REPORT • A 2008. ÉV - ÁRPÁD MIKLÓS NAGY: Centenary of the Collection of Classical Antiquities 1908-2008
CENTENARY OF THE COLLECTION OF CLASSICAL ANTIQUITIES 1908-2008 One hundred years ago on 26 November 1908, an agreement was signed at the Hungarian Embassy in Munich by which the Museum of Fine Arts purchased a collection of 135 pieces of Greek and Roman sculpture in stone, terracotta, and metal from Paul Arndt, a very reputable German dealer and excellent Classical archaeologist. The objects were meant to complement the Museum's existing collection of plaster casts of ancient masterpieces with original works of art. This date is regarded as the birthday of the Collection of Classical Antiquities. The purchase of the Arndt Collection also proved fundamental in that it foreshadowed the Collection's future in at least three ways. First, the new collection was basically comprehensive. Although it contains few authentic masterpieces, taken together it gives a representative picture of ancient sculpture from Cycladic marble figurines through Classical Greek and Hellenistic sculpture and Roman portraits and other sculpture genres, down to early Christian reliefs. Over the last hundred years this comprehensiveness in time was paired with a new spatial dimension. The Collection of Classical Mitiquities grew r from a collection of Graeco-Roman sculpture into the only comprehensive collection of ancient Mediterranean art in Hungary, able to provide an overview (though not always at the same standard) of the art history of Hellas, Italy, Rome, Graeco-Roman and Christian Egypt, and (through individual works) to offer a glimpse of the cultures of ancient Iberia, Phoenicia, Arabia, Palmyra and Parthia. The second important aspect is that the Arndt marbles are almost all unprovenanced. The Mttiquities Department is also a site of intense scholarly research, including the study and publication of works in the Collection; but for most of the pieces now in Budapest, we lack what is one of the most essential starting-points: a clear provenance and archaeological context. This is explained by the purpose of the Collection and the way it grew. Over the course of its history from 1908, the Collection, as a place for antiquities from places outside Hungary (works of ancient art from Hungary found their home in the National Museum), has had to rely basically on pieces in Hungarian private and museum collections which have gradually been absorbed. The Collection now numbers about 6,000 items. A third aspect is no less important. Even at the start, the Collection's survival and success depended on the labour and dedication of a few people. In Hungary, the material culture of the ancient world has until now remained a peripheral and somewhat isolated interest in the wider field of Classics. All this naturally set a double objective for the centenary commemorations. In one very apt formulation, "the celebrations aimed to reflect in a very public way the role of Classical Antiquity in contemporary academic research and cultural life, showing that the Department's
