Walking through the exhibition’s three halls, visitors can follow the 130-year history of the Műcsarnok. The first room presents a timeline of exhibitions and key historical moments of the period from the institution’s opening in 1896 to the present. A selection of artworks is also displayed here, with individual sculptures, paintings and works on paper evoking some of the most significant exhibitions. In the second and third rooms, emphasis is placed on the exhibitions of the recent past and the presentation of data is again accompanied by selected artworks. Particular focus is given to the visual presentation of exhibitions of the past six years, allowing visitors to move from the beginnings to the present day not only chronologically but also in the exhibition space. Our aim is to encourage visitors to discover as many intriguing aspects in the institution’s history as possible and to experience the moments evoked through individual artworks.
The building itself is a unique national landmark, both historically and in terms of urban planning. Designed by Albert Schickedanz, the palace, with its Neo-classical architecture and ancient Etruscan motifs, was opened to the nation by Emperor Franz Joseph I on 4 May 1896. Our exhibition presents some of the building’s original architectural plans and the watercolour designs made for its exterior façades. The Műcsarnok, together with the Museum of Fine Arts and the Millennium Monument, forms the symbolic composition of Heroes’ Square, the sacred centre of celebrations of national identity and events of high state honour brought together in a colonnade. From its earliest days, the institution has borne witness to pivotal points in Hungarian history and in the history of art: Mihály Munkácsy, Károly Lotz and Mihály Zichy lay in state in its ceremonial hall, while Imre Nagy and his fellow martyrs of 1956 were bid farewell on its grand exterior steps on 16 June 1989, the historic overture to Hungary’s democratic transition.
Over the past 130 years, the exhibition programme has continually adapted to the challenges of the time. Founded by the National Hungarian Society of Fine Arts, the Műcsarnok came under the ownership of the City of Budapest in 1926 and was placed under state administration after World War II. Over the period that followed, the institution’s programme evolved from the historic National Fine Arts Exhibitions and the ideologically charged exhibitions of the early years of the socialist era towards a modernising approach that challenged the Stalinist canon, eventually leading to its present-day form of operation. The Hungarian Academy of Arts has been the maintainer of the Műcsarnok since 2014. That same year saw the launch of the National Salons series, alternating between five genres in five-year cycles.
The institution’s leadership faced new, exceptional challenges in its most recent period, from 2020 to 2026. When the Covid-19 pandemic began, the Műcsarnok was among the first cultural institutions to respond by expanding into the digital sphere: it took art into the safety of people’s homes through its virtual tours and online guided tours, even when the building itself remained closed. Following the pandemic, it successfully returned to the programme structure featuring more than twenty exhibitions a year.
curators : Kondor-Szilágyi Mária, Szegő György