Category: Museums

The Páva Synagogue and the adjoining new wing designed by the Ybl-prize winner István Mányi houses the Holocaust Memorial Center since 2004. The subject of the Holocaust Memorial Center’s permanent exhibition is the history of Holocaust in Hungary. Its aim is to recount and present the suffering, persecution and massacre of those Hungarian nationals – mainly Jews and the Roma – who were condemned to annihilation in the name of the racial ideology. The Holocaust Documentation Center and Memorial Collection Public Foundation is the only scientific institution in Hungary that collects, studies, and presents exclusively artifacts and documents related to the Holocaust.

Hungarian Foundation of Photography (the one that operates Museum of Hungarian Photography in Kecskemét, 80 kms east of Budapest) and the MÚOSZ – Society of Hungarian Press Photographers created Hungarian House of Photography in mai Manó House in November 1998 with the goal of finding new sources for the new organization so that it could arrange exhibitions and other events and continue with the reconstruction of the building. The site is also available in Arabic, Russian and Japanese languages.

In 1954, a Council of Ministers order founded the Museum of Literature Petőfi with the aim of collecting and preserving records of Hungarian literature. The name of the Museum presented itself naturally, since the poesy of Sándor Petőfi, who died young in the 1848–49 War of Independence, symbolises Hungarian poetry to the general reader both within and beyond the borders of the country. The present structure of the institution, specialised in the reception of complex authorial, literary legacies, professional processing, restoration and storage took shape in 1970. Besides the collection departments – the Manuscript Archive, the Library, the Art and Relics Collection and the Audiovisual Library – the newly created Public Relations Department and the Marketing Department organise the Museum’s programmes. The Museum’s tasks have included the supervision of literary collections and exhibitions in areas outside Budapest ever since the institution was established. As a result, the Museum of Literature Petőfi has become an institution with nationwide authority in the field of Hungarian literary museology. The Museum administrates the exhibitions and collections of three provincial branches: the Kassák Museum, the Endre Ady Memorial Museum and the Jókai Memorial Room.

The central skanzen of Hungary, the Hungarian Open-air Museum in Szentendre, was founded on 1 February 1967. For a while it operated as the Village Museum Department of the Budapest Ethnographical Museum. Szentendre ha assigned an area of about 46 to it at the source of the brook Sztaravoda. The task of the Museum was to present the vernacular architecture, interior decoration and way of life in rural Hungary from the second half of the 18th century to the First World War through authentic objects in original, transplanted buildings, arranged according to the patterns of settlement. The final master plan envisaged the relocation of about 300 buildings to the Museum for re-erection in 9 groups each representing a region of Hungary. Grouping within the regional units follows the traditional order of the croft (plot, where the farmhouse and farm buildings stand). The picture of the traditional village is completed by sacral, industrial, and public structures that formed part of the traditional village.

The museum collects primarily photographs. Included in its collection of over half million is the first daguerrotyp photographed on 1840, the last picture to join the collection did so yesterday, but by the time you read these lines there will be more recent ones. The Museum has significant materials from those natives of Hungary who have achieved prominence abroad, like André Kertész, László Moholy Nagy, György Kepes, Robert Capa, Cornell Capa, Paul Almásy, Brassaï, Martin Munkácsi and others. The collection holds in no lesser esteem the most outstanding of those who remained in Hungary, like József Pécsi, Rudolf Balogh, Károly Escher, Angelo, Olga Máté, and about a half thousand other artists.

The foundation-stone of the Hungarian Railway Museum was laid on 22 November 1999, on the site of the former Budapest North Depot of the Hungarian State Railways (MÁV). After many months of effort, Europe’s first interactive railway museum opened on 14 July 2000, displaying over a hundred railway vehicles and equipment of varying ages on a site of over 70,000 m2. Fortunately the North Depot’s 1911 roundhouse remained intact and its 34 bays provided an ideal home for the operational vintage fleet. The fleet is comprised of fifty engines, twelve operational and thirty-eight cosmetically restored, plus a wide range of rolling stock: railcars, self-powered rail cars and hand-carts, inspection cars, steam cranes, snow ploughs and other curiosities. The exhibits take visitors through the entire history of the railways from the steam engines of the 1870s to the powerful electric engines of today.

Ludwig Museum is the only museum of contemporary art in Hungary to collect international art. The museum was founded by the Hungarian cultural government in 1989. The collection was established with 70 pieces of contemporary art donated by Irene and Peter Ludwig.

The Hungarian National Gallery is the largest public collection documenting and presenting the rise and development of the fine arts in Hungary. It has operated as an independent institution since 1957. The HNG moved to its present location, the former Royal Palace of Buda, in 1975. Collections: Mediaeval and Renaissance Stone Carvings, Panel Paintings and Wooden Sculptures from the Gothic Period, Late Gothic Winged Altarpieces, Late Renaissance and Baroque Art, Painting from the 19th Century, Sculpture from the 19th Century, The Art of Mihály Munkácsy and László Paál, 20th-Century Art up to 1945, 20th-Century Art after 1945.

The Christian Museum is the largest ecclesiastical collection in Hungary, conserving European and Hungarian works of art of several centuries. On account of its Hungarian, Italian, Netherlandish, German and Austrian paintings, it is the third most significant picture gallery in Hungary, closely following the Museum of Fine Arts and the Hungarian National Gallery in Budapest. The Christian Museum is known also for the versatility of its collections. Besides the late medieval works of art – including the Calvary Altarpiece by Thomas of Coloswar, the Lord’s Coffin from Garamszentbenedek, and the Passion scenes by Master MS –, also the baroque and modern collections, the exceptionally rich collection of the decorative arts, and the collection of prints and drawings, which numbers over 5 000 sheets, are significant. The permanent exhibition of the Christian Museum is situated on the second floor of the Primate’s Palace in Esztergom.

Museum.hu partly serves as a search page with exhibition and event programmes, but also contains home pages of a few museums.