Reitervölker aus dem Osten. Hunnen und Avaren. Katalog der Burgenländischen Landesausstellung 1996 (Huns-Avars: Equestrian Peoples of the East. Catalog of the Burgenland Exhibition, 1996). Falko Daim, Margit Fröhlich, Matthias Misar, Gerald Schlag, Peter Tomka eds., Schloss Halbturn, [1996] 488 pp.
Zwischenwelt: die Steiermark vor 1000 Jahren. (Between Several Worlds: Styria a Thousand Years Ago). [Schloss Aichberg], 1996, 42 pp.
800 Jahre Zisterzienser im Pannonischen Raum. Katalog der Burgenländischen Landes-Sonderausstellung 1996 (The Cistercians: 800 Years in Pannonia. Catalog of the Special Burgenland Exhibition). Jakob Perschy ed., Klostermarienberg, [1996], 207 pp.
Schatz und Schicksal. Steirische Landesausstellung 1996. (Treasure and Destiny. Exhibition of the Province of Styria 1996). Mariazell & Neuberg an der Mürz, [1996], 314 pp.
Aus der Thyssen Sammlung. Steirische Landesausstellung 1996 (From the Thyssen Collection. Exhibition of the Province of Styria 1996). Mariazell, [1996], 62 pp.
Gerald Schöpfler, Klar und Fest. Geschichte des Hauses Liechtenstein (Clear and Firm. History of the Liechtensteins). Riegersburg, 1996, 283 pp.
***
Following the plebiscite in Vienna vetoing the joint Austrian-Hungarian Expo planned for 1995, and with the vanishing of the dream of a 1996 Budapest Expo, both countries sought "substitutes" to commemorate their jubilees. For Hungary, the year 1996 marked the 1100th anniversary of the Magyar's settling in the Carpathian Basin, and the 100th anniversary of the grandiose millennial celebrations highlighting the post-Compromise period of unprecedented economic prosperity; for Austria (Österreich), 1996 was the 1000th anniversary of the first mention of its name (in the Old High German form of Ostarrîchi) in the imperial charter donating a few scattered hamlets in today's Lower Austria to the Bishop of Freising.
Most Austrians probably had a problem identifying
with a celebration commemorating this non-event of a 1000 years ago. It
was not as if the Austrian state had been founded, or its people had found
a new homeland at that date. The name Ostarrîchi in the imperial
grant referred to no more than a number of settled areas in the marches
of the Holy Roman Empire.
In Hungary, the planned celebrations -
which
were to benefit from budget allocations, various ad hoc government committees,
and comprehensive tourist programs -
were emphatically to
be a state event. In spite of the obvious lack of adequate financial resources
and the population's unwillingness to show much enthusiasm, the committees
and the experts continued to work and to organize. In consequence, 1996
turned out to be a culturally significant year in Hungary after all, a
year of superb exhibitions, important conferences, countless contests,
and other events of the most varied sort.
***
A Magyar Nemzeti Múzeum történeti kiállításának vezetôje 3. (Guide No. 3 to the Historical Exhibition at the Hungarian National Museum). A török háborúk végétôl a Millenniumig - A XVIII-XIX. század története (From the End of the Turkish Wars to the Millennium - The History of the 18th-19th Centuries). Tibor Kovács, ed., [Budapest]: Helikon Kiadó - Magyar Nemzeti Múzeum, 1996, 104 pp.
Rokonnépek és ôshazák. A finnugor népek hagyományos kultúrája (Kindred Peoples and Ancestral Lands. The Traditional Culture of the Finno-Ugric Peoples). Vezetô a nemzetközi együttmûködéssel létrejött idôszaki kiállításhoz. (Guide to the temporary exhibition organized with international cooperation). March 30-October 27, 1966. Text compiled by Ágnes Kerezsi, ed. by Attila Selmeczi-Kovács. Néprajzi Múzeum, Budapest, 1966, 52 pp. [+13 color plates].
Káma-vidéki rokonaink ôstörténete (The Prehistory of Our Kindred People in the Kama Region). István Fodor, ed., Tatabánya Museum, May 29-October 31, 1966. [Tatabánya, 1966], 62 pp.
Párhuzamok és különbözôségek. Római kori halomsíros, kocsi- és lótemetkezések (Parallels and Differences. Barrows, Chariot Graves and Equestrian Graves from Roman Times) / Vergleiche und Unterschiede. Römerzeitliche Hügelgräber, Wagen, und Pferdebestattungen. Exhibition, May 5- September 15, 1996. Sylvia K. Palágyi, ed., Veszprém: Laczkó Dezsô Múzeum, 1996 [31 pp.].
"Ôseinket felhozád..." A honfoglaló magyarság ("Tis You Who Led Our Fathers". The Magyars Who Settled Hungary). István Fodor, ed., Hungarian National Museum, March 16-December 31, 1996. Budapest: Magyar Nemzeti Múzeum, [1996], 480 pp.
Mons Sacer 996-1996. Pannonhalma 1000 éve (Pannonhalma over a Thousand Years). Imre Takács, ed., Pannonhalma, 1996, vol. 1: 636 pp. + Supplement: Épületfelmérések (Building Surveys), 7 tables; vol. 2: 384 pp.; vol. 3: A Fôapátság gyûjteményei (The Abbey's Collections), 320 pp.
Kincs, mûkincs, közkincs. Az Országos Széchényi Könyvtár ciméliagyûjteménye (Treasures, Art Treasures, Our Treasures: The Cimelia of the National Széchényi Library). Exhibition. October 1996-January 1997. Orsolya Karsay, ed., Budapest: Országos Széchényi Könyvtár, 1996, 70 pp.
1100 m 2 Liget. A Mûcsarnok és a Városliget száz éve (The 1100-Square-Meter Park. One Hundred Years in the History of the Exhibition Hall and the City Park), Millecentenáriumi kiállitás a Mûcsarnokban (Millecentennial Exhibition in the Exhibition Hall), June 14-August 20, 1966. [Budapest, 1966], 12 pp.
Az ezredéves kiállítás százéves fényképei. Kiállítás egy kiállításról (Photographs of the Millennial Exhibition. An Exhibition about an Exhibition). [Budapest]: BTM Kiscelli Múzeum, 1996, 12 pp.
Schickedanz Albert (1846-1915) - Ezredévi emlékmûvek múltnak és jövônek (Albert Schickedanz (1846-1915) - Millennial Monuments for the Past and the Future). Exhibition in the Museum of Fine Arts, September 19-December 31, 1996. Eszter Gábor and Mária Verô, eds., Budapest, 1996, 456 pp.
Az európai iparmûvészet stíluskorszakai (Stylistic Periods in European Applied Arts). Exhibition conceived by Márta Péter. A szecesszió. A XX. század hajnala (Art Nouveau. The Dawn of the 20th Century). András Szilágyi and Éva Horányi, eds., Budapest; 1966, vol. 1: 277 pp.; vol. 2: 290 pp.
Ács, Piroska, "Keletre magyar." Az Iparmûvészeti Múzeum palotájának építéstörténete a kordokumentumok tükrében ("Look to the East, Hungarians". The Construction of the Museum of Applied Arts Building as Reflected in Contemporary Documents). Budapest: Iparmûvészeti Múzeum, 1996, 72 pp.
A magyar mûemlékvédelem korszakai. Tanulmányok (Periods in Hungarian Monument Protection. Studies) István Bardoly and Andrea Haris, eds. Published on the occasion of "A magyar mûemlékvédelem elsô évszázada 1846-1949" (The First Century of Hungarian Monument Protection 1846- 1949) exhibition, organized by Katalin Granasztói-Györffy. Budapest: Országos Mûemlékvédelmi Hivatal, 1996. Mûvészettörténet - Mûemlékvédelem, vol. 9, 276 pp.
***
[...]
The more ingenious part of the exhibition, in Sankt Pölten, was arranged to correspond to the topics suggested by the subtitle, People, Myths, and Milestones. An imaginary journey over characteristic Austrian landscape in a balloon was followed by computer animations of portraits of individuals of symbolic significance for the country - for instance, Prince Eugene of Savoy, the military genius who had routed the Turks; Empress Maria Theresa; Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart; the Tyrolian hero Andreas Hofer, who had fought Napoleon for the freedom of his land; Johann Strauss; Emperor Francis Joseph; Egon Schiele and Sigmund Freud - all of whom quoted their own pithy, and at times ironic, sayings. The talking caricatures of more contemporary celebrities like Bruno Kreisky, Niki Lauda, and the skier Anne-Marie Pröll likewise had their say.
Next came the huge "Hall of Myths," which one approached through a passage of symbols: one wall was covered with the official insignia, coats of arms, flags, documents, and decorations of the past 1000 years; the other with the banal motifs that are the bread and butter of the tourist trade: Mozartkugel, Sachertorte, the iconography of the cult of Strauss, corny souvenirs, postcards, and T-shirts. At the end of the passage, one caught sight of the towering steeple cross of the Stephanskirche in Vienna, with a free-standing hologram of the Austrian imperial crown beneath it. Just beyond were the partitioning walls dividing the Hall of Myths in a radial arrangement. Each of the segments was devoted to pairs of correlations and/or opposites even in a juxtaposition that served as a critique: religious diversity and a uniform state religion; the age of revolutions and the age of absolutism; military defeat and the ensuing political reforms; oppression and emancipation; the ivory tower of hedonism and the open-mindedness of science; Austria, the melting pot of peoples and the prison of nations; Austria, the bulwark of the West but also its bridge to the East. And then the final theme: economic development, its pluses and minuses. Up on the gallery, a tableau of the "Island of the Blessed". A dummy, sitting in an armchair drinking beer and watching TV within the protective walls of his home - the symbol of a prosperous country whose inhabitants, for all their wealth, cannot escape reality knocking at their door: the poor migrant workers, the mountains of refuse, the thinning of the ozone layer.
The hall "Milestones" was an imaginary archive of Austrian statehood: a kind of illustrated history with charters and seals serving as the illustrations, and the explanatory legends hung on red-white-red flags above the glass cabinets. The last installation, a cupola supported by beams draped in the national colors, rang out with the varied sounds of Austria: poetry, drama, songs, and music by Musil, Grillparzer, Strauss, Mahler, Schubert, and so on. The heraldic colors of red-white-red were, to my mind, used to excess in both exhibition halls, inside and outside. It was a pleasant surprise to see less of the national colors at exhibitions in Hungary, where they seem at last to be learning that there are areas in which less is more.
[...]
More impressive than any similar Hungarian exhibition on the age of the great migrations was the one held in Austria, though, admittedly, with generous help from Hungary. Huns and Avars: Equestrian Peoples of the East, which was shown in Schloss Halbturn/Féltorony, was the most magnificent exhibition in the history of Burgenland (the Austrian province with a substantial Hungarian population) to date, with loans - including some of the most important original artifacts - from the leading collections of the Museum für Islamische Kunst in Berlin, the Römisch-Germanisches Museum and the Schnütgen-Museum in Cologne, the British Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, the Metropolitan Museum in New York, and the Hermitage in St Petersburg. There was also a wealth of Czech, Slovak, and Austrian finds. Most of the Hun and Avar material came from Hungary, having been unearthed in the central region of the Carpathian Basin, the site where both peoples had encamped. The Budapest museums and about a dozen county museums had done their utmost to be of help, their efforts coordinated by Péter Tomka, who served on the three-member organizing committee. The Halbturn exhibition was the only one of the 1996 Austrian events where the research staff of the Hungarian institutions contributing loans was allowed the opportunity to make substantive contributions also to the studies and the object descriptions in the catalog.
Events in the Carpathian Basin were presented in the broad context of their bearing on Rome, on Western Europe, and the Germans and Slavs of Central Europe; they were juxtaposed to what was going on in Byzantium and along the silk roads in parts of Asia extending to China - in short, practically the entire world known at the time. One room showed the floor plan of a Pannonian villa with an arrangement of artifacts and mosaics, and a display of ornamental elements on screens representing the walls; opposite it stood an enormous drawn bow, the arrow pointed at the villa, and behind it, the contrasting archeological legacy of the Huns. The wind rose motif characterized the arrangement of the roomful of material showing the political and cultural ties of the Avars: the contemporary Byzantine, Persian, Chinese, and Carolingian material was arranged along the appropriate - north, south, east, or west - walls, while the Avar finds were displayed in acute-angled triangular glass cabinets to form a wind rose. The spatial juxtaposition was supplemented by a chronological one: the true personality of Attila, King of the Huns, as reflected by archeological finds and the contemporary written sources, was contrasted with the legends and historical, artistic, and literary interpretations of later ages.
The splendid exhibition mounted first in Miskolc and then in the Hungarian National Museum with its wealth of material from the period of the Magyars' settlement in the Carpathian Basin could have rivaled the one in Halbturn. Some of the most treasured artifacts from public collections in Hungary were displayed side by side, the most recent archeological discoveries included. It was the most inclusive exhibition of early Hungarian finds ever. The overwhelming majority of the objects were ninth-tenth-century relics of the advanced metalworking techniques of Hungarian craftsmen; there were also some bone finds, as well as household utensils, tools and implements. Since textile, wood, and leather decompose, we can only guess as to the nature of such objects from the position of metal parts. Unfortunately, there was nothing inspired about the arrangement of this exhibit, and all this wonderful material never really came to life. Their mechanical classification by place of origin, the grouping of the finds according to regions, made for a bewildering experience in the vast hall of the Museum, with its confusing maze of side galleries. There was no reference to the Magyars' relationship with the neighboring peoples, to their ties to distant cultures, or to their political, economic, or artistic contacts. Still, the exhibit did introduce the finds of the most recent decades, and perhaps facilitated things for art historians. For today, the study of the metal artifacts of the Conquest period is still considered to be the sole prerogative of archaeologists. Since it has become clear that - the scholarly consensus of the second third of the twentieth century notwithstanding - there is no relationship, in respect of style or motif, between the metalwork of the Conquest period and the eleventh-century carved stonework of the Christian churches, nor can the "retraining" of gold and silversmiths to stonecutters be assumed, art historians have withdrawn from the study of the artifactual remains of the period. However, art historians must take their turn examining the important new finds, if for no other reason than that a different approach may shed new light on these finds, with repercussions, perhaps, for the direction taken by archeology and historical research.
One of the most original of the exhibitions focusing on the period of the great migrations was arranged by the owner of Schloss Aichberg in eastern Styria. Between Several Worlds: Styria a Thousand Years Ago was the theme of the exhibit demonstrating, with the help of copies of contemporary objects, quotations from contemporary and modern sources, and modern artworks, the in-between position of the region that comprises Styria today. Populated by scattered settlements of Slavs, the Enns valley inhabited by Bavarians, and the territory east of Graz controlled by the Magyars, it lay on the very periphery of Western Europe, which itself was backward as compared to China, the Islamic world, and Byzantium.
[...]
In 1896, Budapest had commemorated the millennium of the Magyar's settlement in the region with a national exhibition that vied with many a world fair. The institutions founded for the occasion a hundred years ago, the buildings, the roads, the urban development and transportation systems of those years of unprecedented upswing have lastingly shaped the life of the capital, as of other Hungarian towns, and for a number of institutions, like the Museums of Agriculture, Transportation, Fine Arts, and Applied Arts, as well as the Mûcsarnok, the 100th anniversary of their foundation coincided with the millecentennial celebrations.
The Mûcsarnok (Exhibition Hall), beside the Városliget (City Park), which had been the site of the erstwhile national exhibition, was restored for the occasion, and hosted an exhibition conjuring up the varied faces of its outdoor neighbor a hundred years ago. For instance, a leather sofa with the inseparable palm tree placed among yellowed cabanas created a realistic image of the lounge of the Neo-Baroque Széchenyi Baths located in the park. The set of paintings hung on a violet wall paneling recalled the old atmosphere of the Exhibition Hall at the time of the Millennium. Another bull's-eye was the assemblage representing the Zoo with posters, twittering green parrots, an amateur film made in 1936, and a decaying yet elegant wooden bench with a cast-iron frame.
Three institutions undertook to reconstruct the National Millennial Exhibition of 1896. Using contemporary photographs - some of them milestones in the history of photography - the Kiscell Museum recreated, as far as possible, the pavilions of the millennial exhibition. The Open-Air Ethnographic Museum at Szentendre reproduced the 1896 Exhibition's, the ethnographic village with its peasant houses typifying the various counties of Hungary. The Museum of Transportation, for its part, revived the transportation exhibits of a hundred years ago. The exemplary documentation included the same catalogs, designs, and vehicle and bridge models that the millennial public had seen, and provided a fine overview of the public roads, street cars, subways, railways and means of water transport used in Budapest at the end of the nineteenth century.
The millecentennial exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts focused on the lifework of Albert Schickedanz (1846-1915), the designer of the museum, and a quintessentially Historicist architect. After a series of unsuccessful designs, he devised the harmonious triad comprising Hôsök tere (Heroes' Square) - the Exhibition Hall, the Millennial Monument, and the Museum of Fine Arts. Mounted by Eszter Gábor, the exhibition of Schickedanz's works was in the most richly-ornamented and most eclectically historicizing rooms of the museum. A hitherto unseen collection of his paintings was displayed in the Marble Hall, together with works related to his family by other painters, and the few extant pieces of the furniture that he had designed. His architectural drawings, painstakingly gathered over many years, were shown in the Baroque Room of the Museum. In the Renaissance Hall connecting the two rooms, mirrors were installed in order to provide a better view of the wall and ceiling ornamentation designed by Schickedanz to the last detail, thus incorporating the hall's ornamental elements among the displays of the exhibition. The Schickedanz exhibition, together with its splendid and very detailed catalog, continues the monographic series on nineteenth-century architects started with exhibitions on Frigyes Feszl and Miklós Ybl.
[...]
Thinking in terms of parallels between the two countries inevitably raises the question of cooperation. There was real cooperation only in the case of modern art exhibits, and in working out the details of the special Hun-Avar exhibition in Halbturn, a project in which a Hungarian specialist took part as an equal partner. It was Hungarian institutions - the Collegium Hungaricum in Vienna, and the Museum of History in Budapest - which organized a highly successful exhibition entitled The Millennium in a K.u.K. Setting at the Vienna City Hall.
Hungarian loans constituted a substantial part of many Austrian exhibitions, but the authorship of the catalogs seldom reflected this fact. Although Hungarians did write some of the studies, the Austrian organizers wrote virtually all of the catalog entries. A harmful tendency of the recent years in more ways than one. For there was often a conspicuous lack of familiarity with the Hungarian literature, and a disregard of the recent research results even in cases where German-language publications were available. In theory, catalogs issued abroad would be an ideal means of disseminating the latest Hungarian research results pertaining to specific works of art. When the leitmotif of the exhibition so requires, Austrian specialists should, naturally, add their own view, but not to the exclusion of the original text written by the museologists of the lending institution. The present practice smacks dangerously of cultural exploitation, with the Hungarian collections being treated as "basements" that the Austrian institutions can "borrow" from at will. As if the Hungarian institutions had relinquished their copyright, in exchange for the brief hospitality extended to the member of their staff supervising the delivery of the loan articles.
The best of exhibitions - to say nothing of the work invested in it - will be lost to posterity unless properly documented. In Austria, catalogs have been available for decades as a matter of course. In Hungary, too, the catalogs of the most important and comprehensive exhibitions have reached European standards in recent years in size and typography alike. Those of the 1996 Pannonhalma and the Hungarian National Museum's Conquest exhibitions, as well as of the Schickedanz exhibition are all cases in point. Catalogs were published of some of the other events as well, several good ones among them, but they were mostly short, sometimes subsequently abbreviated versions, and less ambitious in appearance than the exhibitions warranted. For a number of events, only brief guides were available, and frequently not even those. Even now, as the exhibitions are already closing their doors, there are unpublished manuscripts waiting for the "miracle" of financial backing.
Note
1 * See Pál Lôvei, "Provincialism Austrian Style: Commemorative and Local History Exhibitions," Budapest Review of Books, Summer 1992, pp. 51-57.