6/19/2012

Museums in Budapest


The Museum of Applied Arts

The Museum of Applied Arts is a museum in Budapest, Hungary. The Art Nouveau building was built between 1893 and 1896 to the plans of Ödön Lechner and Gyula Pártos. 

 

It is one of the most characteristic and most representative forms of Lechner's architectural style, featuring Hungarian folk ceramics, including Zsolnay pottery and majolica, also showing Islamic and Hindu motifs(another example of this style is the Geological Institute not far from City Park).

 

The Museum of Applied Arts has a rich collection of European decorative arts, arranged in the following collections: Collection of Furniture, Collection of Metalwork, Collection of Textiles, Collection of Ceramics and Glass. 
 
In addition, the museum has a public library collection. The Museum of Applied Arts has two branches: The Ferenc Hopp Museum of Eastern Asiatic Arts and the Nagytétény Castle Museum.
 
 The permanent exhibition, Collectors and Treasures, presents pieces from the museum's collection. Works of art illustrate the founding and history of the museum, as the exhibition deals with the most important stages in the history of the museum, beginning from 1872.

Art and Design for All – The Victoria and Albert Museum


The Victoria and Albert Museum in London is the world’s leading museum of art and design and has been a near-inexhaustible source of inspiration, innovation and knowledge since its foundation in the mid-19th century. From day one, the museum was celebrated as an exemplary educational institution that reached an unusually wide audience. 
 
Not only did its collections help improve the aesthetic quality of British manufactures and industrial products, they also provided models to be emulated and acted as a school of public taste, educating the museum audience in matters of discernment and taste.
The exhibition Art and Design for All reconstructs the focus of the original core collections of the Victoria and Albert Museum and sheds light on its innovative approach and its function as a role model for other institutions. 

The exhibition also presents the results of recent research into the continental roots of the V&A, which can be traced back to the ideas of Queen Victoria’s German husband, Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, a graduate of the University of Bonn, and the museum landscape of 19th-century Germany.
 
Art and Design for All showcases some 350 spectacular items from the rich holdings of the V&A, which is lending on this scale for the first time in its history. The exhibits are complemented by other exquisite pieces from other British collections, the Berlin Kunstgewerbemuseum and the Museum of Applied Arts in Budapest. The exhibition will be shown in Budapest from 14 June to 16 September 2012.