Hungary’s largest Asian art museum to revive

(MTI) – The Hopp Ferenc Museum, Hungary’s largest and richest institution preserving and presenting Asian art, will operate again under the auspices of the Budapest Museum of Fine Arts, the two museum directors said on Friday.

“We want to give the Hopp Ferenc Museum a new momentum, return its independence it scarcely enjoyed in the past years, a significance it deserves as a home of a collection of 30,000 artefacts,” Laszlo Baan, the director of the Museum of Fine Arts, told a press conference.

The Hopp Museum’s supervision has been returned to the Museum of Fine Arts where it used to be from 1919 to 1935 and will later on operate as an independent institution in the planned Museum Quarter.

Gyorgyi Fajcsak, the museum’s director, called the transfer “the second birth” of her institution. Fajcsak said plans included hosting three major exhibitions between 2014 and 2016, as well as turning the museum into a research and education centre for Asian art.

The two museums have worked out a three-year renewal programme that includes refurbishing the building on Andrassy Avenue, new temporary exhibitions, research plans and publications.

Established by art collector Ferenc Hopp in 1919, the museum holds works from China, Japan, India, South-East Asia, Nepal, Mongolia, Tibet, Korea and the Near East.

Photo: www.imm.hu, MTI

Source: http://mtva.hu/hu/hungary-matters