ART in the YARD
the Kiscell Museum permanent courtyard exhibition
Opening Tuesdays to Sundays from 10:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m.
Curator: Viktória Oth
ART in the YARD
The new permanent exhibition in the courtyard of Kiscell Museum features objects important for the histories of both art and the capital, which were always meant to stand outdoors and that, due to their size, cannot be placed inside the museum.
Kiscell Museum focuses on works of art that have defined, or still define, Budapest as a cultural entity, from the recapture of Buda and Pest in 1686 up to the present day. Exceptions to this are the sarcophagi in the courtyard which now belong to the Aquincum Museum but once decorated the castle of furniture magnate Miksa Schmidt. The former monastery in Kiscell had been turned into a castle, and bequeathed to the capital, by Schmidt, which is why the coffins have remained in the Kiscell Castle gardens.
The museum houses two collections: one dedicated to modern urban history and the other to art (Municipal Gallery); although different in scope, there are many overlaps between the two. The first collection is guided primarily by historical considerations and the second by artistic ones, and somewhere in between are the large statues and works of art that were intended for, or had stood in, public spaces in Budapest.
The heterogeneity of the exhibition is partly explained by these different approaches, and partly by the history of the museum itself. On the one hand the exhibition documents the developments in twentieth- and twenty-first-century sculpture, but on the other hand it tells, through objects, the stories of long-lost buildings and of the city’s past. It illustrates the complexities of and the historical shifts in acquisition policies. This way, links are established between, for example, a Roman sarcophagus, a nineteenth-century column capital, and a piece of site-specific contemporary art.
Visitors may follow the route offered in the exhibition catalogue or explore the garden on their own. Also on display are works rarely or never seen by the public: archival gems, new acquisitions, and contemporary installations specifically produced for the exhibition.
Viktória Oth, curator
Photos: Judit Fáryné Szalatnyay