Dózsa György út 41, 1146 Budapest
In collaboration with the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, the Museum of Fine Arts Budapest is featuring a long-awaited, comprehensive photography exhibition of more than 30 Hungarian descent photographers for five months.
The influence of Hungarian photographers on the universal art of photography has already been presented in several exhibitions abroad: The Hungarian Connection at the National Museum of Photography, Film, and Television in England in 1987; The Hungarian Circle at the Howard Greenberg Gallery in New York in 1995, which showcased the work of 49 Hungarian and Hungarian-American photographers; and Eyewitness at the Royal Academy of Arts in London in 2011.
The Museum of Fine Arts Budapest has already paid tribute to influential artists in the field of photography multiple times before. The exhibition Kertész, Moholy-Nagy, Capa... Hungarian Photographers in America (1914-1989), which has been open from early April this year as part of the Bartók Spring International Art Weeks, is unique in the way it presents the influence of Hungarian-born photographers who emigrated to the United States on American photography and on Hungarian-American photographic relations from the beginning of World War I until 1989 in a never-before-seen comprehensive way.
Photographer: Flóra Szabadi, source: Museum of Fine Arts Budapest
The uniqueness of the exhibition also lies in the fact that it presents the legacy of lesser-known photographers who have remained in Hungary, alongside those of Hungarian descent artists who have become world-famous and emigrated abroad. The material from the United States is complemented by images from Hungarian public and private collections, most of them from the Museum of Hungarian Photography.
This unique and large-scale exhibition is the result of more than 10 years of extensive research by Alex Nyerges, the Hungarian descent director of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, and is being presented for the first time ever in Budapest, within the walls of the Museum of Fine Arts. The eight sections of the exhibition showcase more than 170 works by 32 photographers - including André Kertész, László Moholy-Nagy, Márton Munkácsi and Robert Capa - from Berlin and Paris to New York, Chicago and Hollywood. After its premiere in Budapest, the complete exhibition will be showcased in the United States.
Photographer: Balázs Mohai, source: Museum of Fine Arts Budapest
The influence of Hungarian émigrés in 20th century photography is inescapable, just think of Cornell Capa, André Kertész or György Kepes. These artists have influenced directly or indirectly the work of many outstanding photographers around the world, including Henri Cartier-Bresson, Richard Avedon, Aaron Siskind, Harry Callahan and Ray K. Metzker.
The exhibition is curated by Alex Nyerges, Director of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts and Péter Baki, Director of the Museum of Hungarian Photography.
The exhibition already welcomed a great number of visitors in the first month which unequivocally indicates its success.
Photographer: Balázs Mohai, source: Museum of Fine Arts Budapest
Photographer: Gellért Áment
A state-founded and state-maintained national museum in Budapest, part of the Heroes' Square monument complex and one of Budapest's World Heritage Sites.
The museum collects universal and Hungarian art. Its collections offer an insight into European art until the 19th century, through works by famous artists such as Raphael, El Greco, Leonardo, Dürer, or Goya.
Following a major reconstruction of the building, the museum's Romanian Hall, which has been closed to the public for 70 years, was reopened in 2018.
Photographer: Sandra Sellars
Alex Nyerges
Now in his 18th year as director of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Alex Nyerges is responsible for leading one of the United States’s top 10 comprehensive art museums with exciting and far-reaching strategic initiatives that have transformed the institution, making it more accessible, diverse, and inclusive.
Nyerges, who is partly Hungarian and has more than 40 years of experience as an art museum director, came to VMFA from the Dayton Art Institute, where he was director and CEO from 1992 to 2006. Before his tenure in Ohio, Nyerges was the executive director of the Mississippi Museum of Art in Jackson, a position he also held at the DeLand Museum of Art in Florida.
A native of Rochester, New York, he graduated from George Washington University in Washington, DC, in 1982 with a master’s degree in museum studies. His 1979 undergraduate degree is from the same school with a double major in American Studies and in anthropology/archaeology, as well as writing and lecturing widely on photography.
He has also curated and authored books on exhibitions such as Kertész, Moholy-Nagy, Capa… Hungarian Photographers in America (1914–1989), which opened at the Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest, in April 2024; Edward Weston: A Photographer’s Love of Life (2004), a major retrospective that traveled nationally; and In Praise of Nature: Ansel Adams and Photographers of the American West (1999), which also traveled nationwide.
Source: vmfa.museum
Péter Baki
Rudolf Balogh Prize-winning photographic historian, director of the Museum of Hungarian Photography, executive director of the Hungarian House of Photographers - Mai Manó House and deputy director of the Art and Science Institute of the Rippl-Rónai Art Institute of the MATE, and associate professor.
His teaching activities are related to universities in Hungary, but his professional, editorial and curatorial work covers a much broader spectrum, both nationally and internationally: He has curated over sixty photography exhibitions in Hungary and more than twenty abroad, and is listed as author or co-author of more than forty books on photography, as well as over eighty articles in various professional journals.
His curatorial activities, catalogues, albums and books include the exhibition and album Eyewitness: Hungarian Photography in the Twentieth Century, held at the Royal Academy of Arts, London in 2011, and the exhibition catalogue published by Thames and Hudson.
Source: fotomuzeum.hu