Out of the blue, the Hungarian National Museum changes its name, another Budapest museum closes

The Hungarian National Museum, the country’s first, founded more than two hundred years ago, will change its name due to the government’s plan to modify and develop the network of Hungarian cultural institutions.

According to Lelépő, the Hungarian National Museum‘s new name will be Hungarian National Museum Hungarian National Collections Centre. That comes after the Orbán cabinet decided to merge the national museum with multiple other public collections on 1 July.

The merging institutions include the Museum of Applied Arts, the Hungarian Natural History Museum, the Hungarian Museum of Trade and Tourism, the Petőfi Literary Museum, and the National Széchenyi Library. They will continue to operate as the future Collections Centre’s member institutions.

The library of the Hungarian National Museum. Photo: FB/MNM

The Main Staircase of the Hungarian National Museum. Photo: FB/MNM

Photo: FB/MNM

The Museum of Ethnography closes in June

Thankfully, the Museum of Ethnography closes only temporarily after the Night of the Museums on 22 June. The institution is to welcome visitors again in September with the grand opening of the museum’s permanent exhibition showing more than 3,000 artefacts. Lajos Kemecsi, the museum’s director general, said the work finishing the new exhibition requires the institution’s closure between June and September.

Importantly, the roof garden, the conference room and the library will remain open even during the museum’s closure.

The popular City Park with the Castle of Vajdahunyad, the award-winning House of Hungarian Music and the Museum of Ethnography in the centre. Photo: FB

The new exhibition will cover a three times larger area than in the former Kossuth Square building, in front of the parliament. It will be divided into eight themes showing the Hungarian traditions and the culture of other peoples to the visitors.

The Hungarian Museum of Ethnography has a unique collection of 232 thousand artefacts, photos, handwritten documents, and musical and film records. The museum’s new building in Budapest’s popular City Park is one of the world’s most modern.

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