2016 – „Notes: Wartime”

„Notes: Wartime”. Recollections of the Great War in the Museum of Budapest

Our exhibition on show from 16 March till 22 May 2016 approached the theme of World War I from an unusual angle. Everyday life in the Hungarian capital during the Great War was pictured there as a reflection on the history of the Municipal Museum, predecessor in title to our museum. The Municipal Council of Budapest issued a decree in 1915—as did the city management of Vienna—that records of the Great War should be collected. The Council instructed the Municipal Museum on 5^th January 1915 to collect everything related to the war from wartime prints to pictures, objects, and “war trophies that might be acquired” as well as records of social, healthcare, and governmental activities. Besides these contemporary wartime relics we presented a small bequest from among the WWI museum pieces purchased by the museum lately while in the Church Space there were wartime posters on display together with the only surviving fragment of the Statue of National Sacrifice—the head of a medieval knight figure—as well as the reconstruction of the complete statue.  The curators of the exhibition were Loránd Balla, Zsuzsanna Demeter and Roland Perényi.