Liget is the biggest museum development of Europe today

Liget is the biggest museum development of Europe today; it is natural that there are different opinions –Laszlo Baan, Director-General of the Museum of Fine Arts and ministerial commissioner of the project responded to the doubts over changing the direction of the development in the debate in Katona Jozsef Theater on Monday, hvg.hu said.

Alida Veiszer conversation leader recalled that Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister Laszlo L. Simon said: the new building of the Hungarian National Gallery (MNG) should have been in the Buda Castle instead of the City Park, as Gabor Zoboki architect also produced similar plans, according to the moderator. However, Laszlo Baan said there had not been a new momentum in the dispute.

Laszlo Baan said to response the questions on the Museum of Transport: it would be closed on April 15, most objects of the collection would be seen at temporary exhibition places from the end of summer and they would return into a new building 2018. He stressed they would not only restore the he status of the museum before the war, but two underground levels would also be built.

As he recalled, the aviation history exhibition is already separated, several vehicles are deposit of the Museum of Transport in the Railway Museum, and a part of the trams are in Szentendre. He said it would be advisable to bring together in one place the large vehicles, the Diesel Hall of the Northern Vehicle Repairer would be ideal, but it cost HUF 5-10 billion so the government had to decide on it.

Baan argued for the Photo Museum Budapest, because there are four creators, all of them are related to photography, are kept counted in the 20^th – century Hungarian visual art: Moholy-Nagy, Andre Kertesz, Capa and Brassai. A Hungarian photo museum could present international stars, but it also could show contemporaries like Andras Dezso from the USA.

Architect Mihaly Balazs said about the Hungarian Architectural Museum that architecture cannot be exhibited, but there are “products” which represent value as a blueprint or a model. Art historian Istvan Barkoczi would present fragments of historical buildings and models of existing famous buildings, but on the contrary, Laszlo Baan said would have liked the Museum would examine architecture in a socio-historical perspective, as an adventure.

According to esthete Peter Gyorgy, there are a few good architectural museums in the world. He thinks an architectural museum could provide opportunity that architecture become part of the Hungarian public speech again.

When asked about the progress, Laszlo Baan said urban planning had to be amended and an international design contest had to be announced, the government took care of the necessary resources.

The issue of green spaces is an interesting problem – he added. Currently, 35% of the City Park has concreted surface, so at the expense of it, proportion of green spaces can be increased despite the constructions.

Istvan Barkoczi questioned the merging of the Museum of Fine Arts and the National Gallery, saying “it was a legitimate thing presenting     a country’s national collection separately”. Peter Gyorgy did not agree with that. Mihaly Balazs said “it is not a heretical thing” to raise new buildings in the place of the demolished ones. He said the Liget was a terrible condition and it would be much better after the project. Istvan Barkoczi believed the collection of the National Gallery should be kept separately from the Museum of Fine Arts in its current site or in a new building in the Szent Gyorgy ter in the Castle, because it is necessary for the revitalization of the Castle.

Peter Gyorgy said the Castle had been a difficult political space from 1945 and there had not been any good solutions since that. The redevelopment of the Palace in the Kadar era had created unusable places and something had to be done, he said.

Laszlo Baan said the five museums of the project could be built in several other places in the city, but there was no real chance their separate realization, if the government considered the economic return of the project as well, since a Liget brand only with museums, zoo, bath and park would be able to attract one more million visitors a year.

based on the article of hvg.hu
translated by BA

Photo: www.epiteszforum.hu

Source: http://hvg.hu