History Displayed. Anniversary Exhibitions, Medieval Art, and the Hungarian National Museum
History Displayed. Anniversary Exhibitions, Medieval Art, and the Hungarian National Museum

Summary/Abstract: In 1896, Hungary marked the millennium of the Magyars’ settlement in the Carpathian Basin by a special Act of Parliament. The year 1996 as the 1100th anniversary of the same event is equally arbitrary albeit once again enacted. Just about none of the evidence points to 896 as the year of the Conquest. However, there can be no doubt about the lasting significance of one of the ventures commemorating the year, the exhibition arranged by the Hungarian National Museum in the monumental building designed by Mihály Pollack to house the original core collection which Ferenc Széchényi endowed to the nation as early as in 1802. The most durable aspect of this venture is undoubtedly the (as yet unfinished) restoration work which has been carried out on this magnum opus of Hungarian neo-Classical architecture.

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