The new Museum of Ethnography will open its doors on Monday

The new building of the Ethnographic Museum has been completed, and brand new exhibits await visitors. Lajos Kemecsi, the director general of the institution, informed vasarnap.hu about the event. The museum welcomes its visitors with extended opening hours on May 23 from 2 p.m.

You can walk between the two main entrances of the Museum of Ethnography without changing tickets. In the meantime, you can view our permanent exhibition called the forty-meter-long ceramic square, where four thousand works of art are presented. With the new building, the museum also received new functions, the most important message of which is perhaps precisely that the Museum of Ethnography wants to become a safe and authentic meeting place in the City Park.

A point that is inviting for the people living in the city and for visitors and foreigners as well.

So far, the Museum of Ethnography has only been replaced in buildings that were not designed as museums. Exactly 150 years ago, in 1872, János Xantus was appointed head of the Ethnographic Collection of the National Museum. From this we also expect the independence of the Museum of Ethnography. During this long time, the institution operated in several locations, but it never had its own building - one that was specifically designed as a museum. We were temporarily in the Várbazar, then in the Városliget in the Industry Hall. After twenty years, due to a huge storm damage, the museum's collection was evacuated to the Könyves Kálmán körút gymnasium - whose building represented other functions. The museum was moved from there in the 70s to Kossuth Square, where we left in August 2021. We are now ready to open here on the edge of Városliget.

We know very well that moving is a huge test as a private person, let alone for a museum that manages a collection of nearly 250,000 artefacts. During the museum's move, in addition to being a serious logistical challenge, great care had to be taken to ensure that it all happened without damage. We have objects that are very fragile. Our collection of male eggs is like that, but next to it there are those baskets made of more than a hundred-year-old cane or harvest wreaths made of straw, which would crumble to dust if we carelessly touched them. These could only be packed and shipped after special restoration work processes.

A huge amount of work is behind us, but the main building of the Ethnographic Museum will finally open its doors to the interested public on May 23. Modern exhibitions and a variety of programs await visitors. In addition to the spectacular exhibitions, we must also mention the "invisible" result that the museum's collections have finally been secured in a world-class storage base.

Our permanent exhibition Zoom opens at the same time as the museum. As the title indicates, he tries to present the objects based on a change of perspective. With the exhibition, we want to point out that the Museum of Ethnography receives a wide variety of objects - from shaman's drums to typewriters - which it interprets, analyzes and presents to visitors.

We are very confident that, with this new approach, we will be able to make those who come here think, and show them the complexity of our world.

On one thousand square meters, there is an exhibition entitled We have arrived, in which there is a huge travel trunk installation. There are a hundred selected artefacts here, which are connected to the research carried out by 30 of my museologist colleagues over the past 15 years. This is a social, smart exhibition that tells previously unknown stories through spectacular objects.

Yes, this change did not happen overnight. This process started decades ago in many countries of the world, including Hungary. The former beautiful marble palace on Kossuth Square simply did not allow us to present the exhibitions based on the new approaches due to its architectural characteristics. However, the programs, events and various occupations already represented this new approach there. However, the new building finally has the necessary conditions for everything.

This is a very distinguished period of Hungarian ethnography. This type of infrastructure development offers a special opportunity from which I believe the profession can benefit a lot. It can show its social utility. The accumulated knowledge base of ethnography and anthropology can help provide answers to relevant questions of the 21st century. In addition, you can do all this while having fun and building a community.

Source and full article and featured image: vasarnap.hu/Gábor Tóth

2022plus update: On Sunday afternoon, the building of the Ethnographic Museum was officially handed over. to the Liget Budapest project, the Museum of Ethnography got a world-class new home. Visitors can take possession of its new building on the edge of the City Park from Monday afternoon. The Liget Budapest project is already a historic undertaking in its scale, not only in the last hundred years of Hungary, but currently the largest complex cultural development in the whole of Europe - emphasized László Baán. The ministerial commissioner of the project praised the genius of Marcel Ferencz, who designed the building, and also thanked Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, who opened the museum, for his personal support.

Lajos Kemecsi, the general director of the Museum of Ethnography, recalled that for the first time in the history of the 150-year-old institution, the collection is getting a home tailored to its needs as a result of a "project realized as an unprecedented success in the field of museums in Hungary".

It's good to be Hungarian! Prime Minister Viktor Orbán declared at the ceremonial handing over of the new building of the Museum of Ethnography in the City Park on Sunday.

Prime Minister Viktor Orbán gives a speech at the ceremonial handing over of the new building of the Ethnography Museum in the City Park MTI/Minister's Press Office/Zoltán Fischer The Prime Minister emphasized:

the government decided "in the middle of an uncertain and changing world" to allocate Hungary's resources to culture, cultural spaces, museums and concert halls, the built environment and Budapest's most beautiful park.
"While everyone insisted that it was impossible, we are moving step by step, building by building, and even on April 3, the Hungarian people confirmed to us that we did the right thing, that we did it, and that they believe that more, more, more, Europe its biggest cultural investment must be fully completed. I feel that we have been given the authority to implement the entire program”

he declared.
He highlighted:

they wanted a building where the natural beauty of Hungarian folk culture could unfold to the fullest. He put it this way: today we are celebrating that "our treasures have been placed in their rightful place" and we have one task left: we must grow up so that it is not just a day of celebration, but that we find joy in our Hungarianness every day. This remarkable building, which is another outstanding example of Hungarian ingenuity and sense of beauty, helps us in this

- He told.

Source MTI