античната колекция на Музея за изящни изкуства в Будапеща - на 100 години

MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS,
COLLECTION OF CLASSICAL ANTIQUITIES
1908 – 2008

A CENTENARY CELEBRATION

On 26th November, 2008, it will be exactly one hundred years since the
Budapest Museum of Fine Arts acquired a collection of 135 pieces of
ancient sculpture. That group of works became the nucleus of a
constantly expanding collection, one of the most important in Central
Europe outside of Austria and Germany, and the only one of its kind in
Hungary. With this inaugural act, the Museum extended its mandate to
embrace the study, collection, and exhibition of the arts of Ancient
Greece, Rome and the ancient Near East.
Over the past century, the Collection of Classical Antiquities has
grown into an impressive array of 5700 items representing the artistic
styles and cultures of the Ancient Mediterranean, from Cycladic idols to
Helladic Cyprus to Late Antiquity. The Department has become the premier
Hungarian centre for research and education in Ancient and Classical
art. It is the only place in this country where a visitor, whether a
student, a scholar, or a member of the general public, can encounter the
artistic heritage of Greece, Italy, and the Roman Mediterranean in the
flesh.
We plan to celebrate the centenary of the Collection and the Department
by opening the Museum's doors to artists, scholars, and the wider public
with a series of programs designed to call attention to the relevance
and place of ancient art and culture in the contemporary world. We hope
to explore the ways in which our own culture is an inheritance of the
Hellas, Rome, and the ancient Near East. This intention corresponds to
the wider philosophy of the Collection from the beginning: that the
study of Antiquity can have no lesser aim than a better understanding of
our own world through a fertile and productive dialogue with the past.