| Long Night of the Museums |
 |
| Written by Sylvia Enten, Translation Zoltan Bukkfalvi |
| Sunday, 21 June 2009 10:07 |
|
The seventh occasion, in a hundred towns, two hundred programmes and exhibitions  BUDAPEST The programme series titled the Night of the Museums started in 1999 following a French pattern, and is being organised since six years by the educational and cultural department as an easy, summer night excursion. The aim is for the museums to become meeting places where a sparkling cultural life prospers, where a variety of events provide entertainment to the visitors.
There are both constant and occasional localities for the events, giving place to a rich amount of museum associated programmes such as exhibitions, different activities, film projections and conversations, concerts and dance shows. The speciality of this series is that with only a single ticket one can visit all the local exhibitions and events. Just in Budapest there are roughly 70 programmes… In front of the Museum of Fine Arts there was already a huge mass waiting before 6.00 pm. A group of students arrive from the left heading straight to me. The teacher leading the looked at me and asked quietly: which are the exhibitions worth seeing? All of them! – I replied with determination. After this I gave him a program sheet and went up the stairs of the Museum of Fine Arts hastily.  Long Night of the Museums, Budapest At the entrance László Baán, the director of the museum told me that in two years the museum will be enriched with two new buildings financed by the EU. Its speciality will be its underground location, and will be one of Budapest’s biggest cultural investments. There will be a new exhibition hall, restaurant and gift shop right under Heroes’ square. The corridors connecting the surface building with the one underground will be probably planned and constructed according to some bold architectural method. According to the plans the museum would continue with the highly successful Monet showcase, and would buy at least one world famous masterpiece a year. Great potential lies within the museum, yet, from the million people visiting Heroes’ square every year, only around 250 thousand goes into the museum itself. With interesting programmes, better marketing and high level services the institution would easily become on of the countries most inevitable sights. The new building block will be initiated with the grandiose Cézanne exhibition. According to Baán, for the upper class, which was highly educated earlier, visiting museums was a type of status symbol. Today the cultural consistence of people has changed, and exhibitions mainly aim the masses. The basic functions of museums are to guard relics, to analyse and scientifically process them, to exhibit them, and to provide the visitors new quality services, allowing them to spend the whole day in the museum.  Long Night of the Museums, Budapest In this month the museum gained pieces of art immeasurable in value from Jerusalem. The exhibition, which is called The Heritage of Jerusalem, is vastly unique in its own way, for its treasures from the National Museum of Israel cover more than nine thousand years. The most ancient relic among them is a nine thousand years old prehistoric mask, which has been found in the Judean desert. It is an outstanding work form the age, and there are plenty more curiosities to explore. Among these are the scrolls of the Dead Sea, which never have left the walls of Jerusalem’s institute until now. One of them in particular, the scroll of Isaiah is almost fifty centimetres long. After this the exhibition sends the visitors to the age of Jesus Christ. The next masterpieces are Rubens’ prophet pictures from the 15th century, followed by Chagall, Rodin and Rothko, closing the exhibition with the contemporary works of Wallinger and Boltanski. Budapest and Jerusalem are quite similar in that they are both meeting points to different cultures and religions. This rich material has been bought here as an effort of cooperation between the two countries. What is the aim of all this? – I ask the director. The aim is for the most exciting treasures worldwide to find their way to Hungary – he said, and added: with the exhibition The Heritage of Jerusalem, the renovating and expanding plans of two museums meet. Bookmark us: 
|
| Last Updated on Thursday, 16 July 2009 21:52 |