Protest against the Merger of the Hungarian National Gallery with the Museum of Fine Arts
On 29 February 2012 the Hungarian National Gallery will cease to exist as an independent institution. Something unprecedented will happen: without plausible or acceptable explanation, with unreasonable and incredible haste, and within four months, the independence of a 55-year-old internationally acknowledged institution, one of Hungary’s leading museums, will be eliminated. By being merged into the Museum of Fine Arts, which is about the same size and has an international field of interest, the Hungarian National Gallery – the main institution entrusted with the collection and maintenance of Hungarian works of art – will lose its institutional and curatorial independence. The justification given for this hasty merger gives rise to the fear that in the future there will be no venue to present Hungarian art in all its richness and complexity from the earliest times to the present day, to the loss of the visitors interested in this field of culture. The unwelcome transfer of the more than 130,000 works of art connected with
the ill-conceived merger will be an incalculable burden to the central budget and will expose these invaluable treasures of Hungarian cultural heritage to grave risks.
It is not too late to stand up against it.
Budapest, December 2011
CSc Enik Buzási
Art Historian, Senior Scientific Fellow (retired) of the Hungarian
National Gallery, Budapest
Eszter Gábor
Art Historian, Senior Scientific Fellow (retired) of the Museum of Fine
Arts, Budapest
dr. Katalin Sinkó
Art Historian, Senior Scientific Fellow (retired) of the Hungarian
National Gallery, Budapest
You can see the signatories and sign the petition here:
http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/mng/
The Blue Rider Centenary Symposium
Friday 25 November 2011, 10.30–17.30
Saturday 26 November 2011, 10.30–17.00
This symposium celebrates the centenary of the first exhibition of The Blue Rider at Galerie Thannhauser in Munich in December 1911. The Blue Rider was a global project including references as diverse as Japanese art, Russian folk art, children's drawings, Bavarian glass painting and artworks by contemporary European artists, musicians and writers. The two-day event will establish the divergent as well as related patterns of intention, outcome and influence presented under the name Der Blaue Reiter and explore its ongoing legacies and relevance today. Keynote presentations by Annegret Hoberg and Peter Vergo. Keynote performance by Stelarc. A performance of Kandinsky's Der Gelbe Klang (Yellow Sound) will take place on Friday evening.
download programme (PDF, 569 KB)
In collaboration with University of Bristol and Centre for Fine Art Research Cardiff (CSAD)
Supported by the British Academy and the Bristol Gallery
Tate Modern Starr Auditorium
£30 (£20 concessions), booking required
For tickets book online
or call 020 7887 8888
Research Forum for German Visual Culture (RFGVC)
The Research Forum for German Visual Culture (RFGVC) is a network organisation that exists under the auspices of the Visual Arts Research Institute, Edinburgh (VARIE) based at the University of Edinburgh, and involving VARIE consortium partners - Edinburgh College of Art, the National Galleries of Scotland, National Museums Scotland, National Library of Scotland, University of Glasgow, and the University of St Andrews, as well as other partner institutions in the UK and abroad.
The RFGVC is inter- and multi- disciplinary, inter-school, inter-institutional, and international in orientation. The scope of research interest encompasses Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, and while the central focus is likely to be on modern and contemporary visual culture, the forum does not exclude coverage of earlier periods.
In the first instance, the forum is designed to cohere and draw upon the considerable expertise and research networks of Germanists based in Scottish academic and art institutions, and to create various opportunities for knowledge transfer. Beyond this goal, it is intended as a key research exchange point encouraging Anglo-American-German relations within a matrix of international research institutions, centres, associations, and societies.
The RFGVC will encourage contact between British, American, and German art historians and curators, fostering and contributing to the development of national and international collaborative, cross-disciplinary and cross-cultural research by means of seminars, conferences, colloquia, and lectures. In due course, the RFGVC will also develop an active programme of film screenings and other events.
For information about the forum, and for details about forum events, visit the RFGVC website at http://www.ed.ac.uk/schools-departments/arts-culture-environment/history-art/news-events-projects/projects/german-visual-culture