What Made a Museum National in the 19 th Century? The Evolution of Public Collections in Hungary

Transcription

1 What Made a Museum National in the 19 th Century? The Evolution of Public Collections in Hungary Museums in 19 th century Hungary are usually interpreted along national vs. universal lines, and often with a normative preference for the latter. This paper acknowledges the importance of this factor, yet attempts to show first that these two categories had each numerous, complex meanings and, second, that they stood as much in fruitful interrelation as in this traditionally implied opposition. A cornerstone of this question is in what sense the flagship Hungarian National Museum, established by Count Ferenc Széchényi in 1802, was national. Looking at its collections, we find that beyond the Library that initially formed its largest component the Museum held mostly numismatic items. These focused indeed on Hungarian coins, for the Count had kept his foreign numismatic collection in family possession. However, the first catalogue of the Museum, the Cimeliotheca Musei Nationalis Hungarici (1825), which comprised the growth of collections until 1820, listed a further 1100 non-numismatic objects, the core of the Antiques Cabinet, and these showed an approximate balance of Classical Antiquities (ca. 500 items) and of objects of national interest (ca. 600 pieces). The acquisition of the first collection of Miklós Jankovich negotiated from 1825 on, and perfected in 1836 further strengthened the presence of universal holdings in the Museum. Thus, whilst it is true that the original concept of the Museum Hungaricum, put forth by first Director Jakab Ferdinánd Miller in 1807 under the strong influence of Palatine Joseph, Supervisor of the Museum highlighted the importance of national collections, by the end of the first third of the century, through acquisitions from the Weszerle, Kiss and Jankovich Collections, the Museum had amassed sizeable universal holdings. The Palatine saw no contradiction between these directions: he was the most ardent supporter of the Jankovich acquisition. In turn, Jankovich whose collection was of exquisite quality, and thus not only expanded the scope of the Museum, but also raised its scholarly status from rather modest fundamentals to that of a serious institution cared very much for Hungarian objects, too. If Széchényi acted as a generous aristocratic proxy for the missing Hungarian royal donator, then Jankovich, of the landed gentry, assumed much of what was the task of the growing bourgeoisie elsewhere in Europe: saving from dispersal the objects of national history, primarily from the Middle Ages. Jankovich did something similar to what Ferdinand Wallraff, the brothers Melchior and Sülpiz Boisserée, and Freiherr von Aufsess did 1

2 at the same time in Germany. Jankovich collection, first private, then transferred to the Museum, operated as a Rettungsanstalt dessen was durch Händler ins Ausland wanderte, to quote Aufsess statement about the Germanisches Nationalmuseum in Nuremberg. Cultural heritage national collections This indicates that the Museum in Pest collected Hungarian objects not (only) because these were national, but (rather or also) because they were threatened with dispersal. This was one of the moments in the prolonged birth of the concept of national heritage. Not the origin, but the value, and the significance for the future, of the object were deemed important here. The Museum was to preserve these objects, because secularisation, industrialisation and other phenomena of the modern age were turning the past into memory, and the supraindividual institution of the Museum was seen as the reliable custodian of physical objects, understood as carriers of a slowly forming cultural awareness and national identity. Jankovich, and some other collectors, also acquired objects related to the history and culture of non-hungarian nationalities living in the country and in wider Central Europe. Thus, if this was national collecting, then this meant the documentation of cultural transfer between the peoples of this region, instead of collecting based on an ethnic concept of the nation. In a word, not primarily the objects, but the institution was national in this sense. Not its collections, but rather its tasks were national. It is worth recalling that first Director Miller referred to the Museum in the Visitors Instructions in 1811 as Magyar Nemzeti Gyjteményes Tár / Hungarian National Collections Cabinet. The first adjective, Magyar, clearly stated its national feature, so obviously Nemzeti stood for something else: for the vocation of the Museum to foster national erudition and identity in a word, avant-la-lettre, the awareness of national cultural wealth. This approach combined elements of the Enlightenment through Bildung, as much as of Romanticism via the building of a community. Since this community was more imagined than yet existing, and required many subsequent decades to mature, the national feature of the Museum can be said in this respect to have become, only much later, the result of the events of the 19 th century, rather than being a complete and well-defined cause and programme from the foundation onwards. Whilst the story of natural science holdings would require separate examination, it needs to be added that naturalia formed a key component of the Museum from 1803 on (donated by Júlia Festetich, the founder Count Széchényi s wife), and this obviously had no national connotation. In fact, the dynamic development of natural history holdings and their 2

3 only late, gradual separation into a specialised Museum, worn out well into the 20 th century suggested a strong scholarly, apolitical view of the Museum. This rested in part on the Enlightenment view of the unity of naturalia and artificialia, a concept later seen differently, yet not alien to Romanticism, either. Beyond the task of scholarship, and this spiritual worldview, education ranked very high in this respect. The practical importance of natural sciences was recognised, and the national vocation of these holdings could be identified in raising the general level of knowledge in the country. It is worth remembering that one of the greatest proponents of collecting natural as much as archaeological specimens, Flóris Rómer, also gained the decisive impetus for his collecting fervour from the needs of his school in Gyr from the 1840s onwards. The shifts in the ideas of another pivotal figure in this museum programme, Ferenc Pulszky, from national towards universal antiquities as promulgated in his seminal publications in 1838, 1852 and 1875 can likewise be explained to a considerable extent by his more and more refined espousal of the educational goals of museums. This again underscores how cautiously one has to regard the various meanings of national in this museum movement. Especially the political component of the national character of the Museum ascribed to it often in retrospect can be ruled out to have existed at its foundation. Neither Széchényi, nor the Palatine or Jankovich would have thought of the Museum as an embodiment of political independence from Vienna. Samuel Bruckenthal s museum in Transylvania came into being just at the same time, and operated likewise for the cultural and scholarly education of a nation-to-be, the Saxons of the region, but it worked also likewise under full political loyalty to Habsburg rule. Later on, the Hungarian National Museum did assume functions of national politics, but it was neither the cause nor the agent of these. It is more appropriate to say that politics came to realise the potential of the Museum in communicating patriotic messages, rather than implying that the Museum had initiated these. An example worth bearing in mind is that the much-cited interior decoration of the building of the Museum, displaying motifs of national Culturgeschichte, was far from being a patriotic idea, but was actually commissioned by a chief Viennese arts administrator, Rudolf Eitelberger, and with the express aim of promoting Vienna-centred political cohesion in the Empire. The fact that these wall paintings gained a national message later was a result of history, and should in no way be comprehended as a national aspect in the construction of the building. 3

4 Civil society political nation Whereas the political connotation in the early history of the Museum ought in this sense to be discounted, there are other elements of its national side that need to be mentioned. One of them is the elevation of private collections to the legal status of national cultural entities. Széchényi s offer, once accepted by the Emperor, was no longer individual concern, but state affair. The fruit of fifteen years of private passion (his collection had come into being within such a short time, from 1787) turned from a particular venture into a general cause. This meant much more than symbolic recognition; the state assumed responsibility for sustaining the Museum. This feature of modern museums upheld by the state is often forgotten, although efficient administration introduced actually by Napoleon was indispensable for incorporating vast new departments and producing large-scale exhibitions. Now, the Hungarian National Museum lagged heavily behind proper governance until as late as the 1870s, when Ferenc Pulszky reformed its structure, yet its state ownership did guarantee one very important achievement: the collections were not to disperse. The importance of this became apparent with regard to the second collection of Miklós Jankovich (begun 1833), which failed to land in the Museum, and thus dispersed. Although independent Parliament and Government were not born before the Compromise with Austria in 1867, this wider than private responsibility for the Museum was not only supported, but also came to be shared by new groups of society soon. The founding collection and the initial plot for the site of the Museum (the latter donated by Count Antal Grassalkovich) came from two aristocrats, yet the purchase of Jankovich first collection, and the construction of the Museum building were financed by subscription from the whole nobility (1836). Not only was this subscription much wider than the individual act of donation by two magnates, it was also obligatory. However obsolete it was, by the then prevailing concept of the nation which comprised noblemen the whole nation contributed with this to what is sometimes called the second foundation of the Museum. Moreover, further single donations to the collections issued mostly from city-dwellers, merchants and others from the tiers état, indicating wide identification with the cause of the Museum. Its garden and many further amenities and programmes were likewise financed by various social strata. Thus, the Museum grew increasingly national from a social point of view: more and more groups of society associated with it, and sacrificed their time, material and other means for its improvement. A precondition, as much as a consequence, of this was growing access to the Museum. For more than the first half-century of its existence, the Museum s holdings if 4

5 exhibited at all were presented in what we consider Schau- or Studiensammlungen, i.e. in storage rooms with cabinets, where the items could be studied by scholars, rather than enjoyed by visitors. The first permanent exhibition, installed with the express aim of reaching beyond a scholarly impact, and welcoming visitors, opened in This was the Gallery of European paintings acquired from Archbishop Pyrker, former Patriarch of Venice. Given that the preceding forty-four years had supplied exhibitions only to specialists, it seems plausible to regard their impact during the early decades of the Museum as scholarly, rather than as nationalistic. Moreover, the 1846 exhibition was also the first occasion the Museum published a catalogue in Hungarian. The event supplies thus evidence to how complex the national character of the Museum could be understood at this time: a foreign Old Masters Gallery occasioned the publication of the first catalogue in the vernacular, and since a second permanent exhibition that of Antiquities did not open before 1870, for a quarter of a century the only permanent exhibition of the Museum rested on classical European paintings. Was this exhibition then that of a national museum at all? Yes, very much so. Apart from the fact that it soon included an increasing number of Hungarian paintings, it did have a sense of national impact: self-appreciation, pride of having such a Museum, a growing awareness of sustaining it by the efforts of a national community, and the need to be informed of its exhibits, objects, publications and values. Culture national and universal became a national good; its consumption became part of civic life. Scholarship and public education I have so far avoided using a phrase that may best suit for covering all these meanings associated with the national : this is the category of public. In many cases when arguing for or against the national specificity of the Museum, public would do better. The transfer of private collections to the public domain, the financing of the Museum by public means, its vocation to further közmveldés (public education), and the practice of widening public access to the exhibitions all testify to this central position of public. This was a Museum for the public benefit, and with various public vocations served by means of collections of both national and universal culture and history. To see this rightly, the mission of having collections in any museum needs to be defined carefully. In a sense, it is the collection that determines a museum, since this is the only stable component, with all others building, staff and visitors liable to change. Yet a collection exerts influence only by its public appearance in exhibitions, publications and 5

6 reproductions; that is, the collection defines only the potential of a museum, and it is the message formed by using the items of the collection that executes an impact on the public. In the light of this, the national vs. universal feature of a museum rests in equal measure on the collection and its public uses. Objects pertaining to national history may have universal meaning in the various functions of a museum, such as scholarship, aesthetic enjoyment, visual education, and historic documentation provided that they are exhibited and published in proper context. Likewise, a universal collection may be reduced in its impact to local scope if shown in a narrow-minded way. In and by itself, a national vs. a universal collection gives no indication of the accomplishments of a museum; and also the meanings of national and of museum changed severally. The national character of the Museum in Pest needs to be weighed out in the interplay of its collections and their public application. A good example of this was a major success in the Museum s endeavours for international recognition, when it hosted in 1876 the 7 th International Congress on Anthropology and Ancient Archaeology. The conference awarded acclaim to the scholarly work of the Museum on its finds in Hungarian soil. The proper interpretation and presentation of national antiquities by supra-national methods earned international praise. Thus, local material was not necessarily provincial: the way the Museum as a timemachine re-invigorated the past was as important in shaping its local, national and universal significance as the collection itself. A different kind of example with a similar message can be seen in Bishop Arnold Ipolyi s donation to the Museum (1872) of Mediaeval panel paintings, purchased mostly in Germany: Ipolyi was a pioneer of national monument protection and of collecting folk culture, and saw this in unity with acquiring, and donating to the Museum, works of frühdeutsche Malerei, re-discovered by German Romanticism as national treasure. German national painting, once in a Hungarian museum, was regarded as part of the universal collections; at the same time, it was a peculiar entity, since it had to spur a similar re-assessment of national art from the Hungary of the Middle Ages. Again a different instance of combining national and universal values in the collections as well as in their use was the acquisition of painter Antal Haán s collection of Classical Antiquities by Békés County at that time (today exhibited in Gyula). Here a local history museum bought Roman and Etruscan works from a peregrinating Hungarian who had spent a long time in Italy. The museum attempted to disregard the hierarchy of local, national and universal archaeological finds, and claimed rightly universal significance for its holdings, clustered otherwise as mere Heimatkunde. It is a pity that of the numerous local history museums of Hungary only few followed suit, and even those that did receive universal art 6

7 from private donors (Zichy Collection given to Budapest, later the Déri Collection donated to Debrecen) failed to elevate the use of these collections, i.e. the work and impact of their museums, beyond the level of local history. Only few other private collections (István Ferenczy, István Delhaes) of Classical universal art were put to better use in museums. Specialised museums Another case in point can be located by briefly looking at one of the offspring of the National Museum, the Museum of Ethnography, which gained autonomy stepwise from Its first catalogue presented holdings from Papua New Guinea, collected by Lajos Bíró (1899): just as in the National Museum, first a non-hungarian collection was published in a catalogue. With the same determination, Hungarian handicraft and folk art was lavishly presented to the international public in Vienna in 1873, and the success of that exhibition motivated the decision that these national holdings should be kept together. First they were allotted to the other offspring of the National Museum, the Museum of Applied Arts, later they were moved to the Museum of Ethnography. Whichever museum allocated to, the success of this material in Vienna purposefully collected by Flóris Rómer and János Xántus all over the country in 1872 greatly contributed to realising its national value back home. This last example is useful not only because it signals the interdependence of the national and the universal in the working of these museums, but also because actually it was not quite all the same which museum the Hungarian material of Vienna was to be given to. The decision betrayed much of what contemporary professionals understood the purpose of such a collection to be. As the Museum of Applied Arts was a practical institution (as much a school as a museum), and served the aesthetic refinement of craftsmen and the public, first the commercial function of this collection was evident in the eyes of museum administrators of the age. Thus, again it would be erroneous to attribute nationalistic or political meanings to planting such a folk collection in this museum; rather, it was seen as a good sample material for rejuvenating industry through authentic national motifs. There was little, if any, ideology in this programme, and similar pragmatism dominated the incorporation of non-national holdings in the Museum of Applied Arts, too. For this Museum was indeed enriched in the majority with non-hungarian acquisitions, yet it would be incorrect to interpret this as a breakthrough of universal values. True, it presented artworks grouped by their material, technique and style, instead of their value in (national) cultural history; still this happened not for the connoisseurs sake, but for educative purposes. 7

8 To the extent Hungarian collections could be shown to have served partly universal goals, these universal collections of applied arts need to be regarded from a pragmatic, local point of view: foreign art served no pure aesthetic, but the education of Hungarian masters and visitors. Thus, the Museum of Applied Arts with its primarily international collections was just as part of the national museum landscape as was the National Museum with its collections that were to remain dominantly Hungarian from the break-away of the specialist museums of fine arts, applied arts and ethnography in the 1870s onwards. The national character of the major Hungarian museums after the wave of specialisation would deserve extensive analysis, yet one thing seems certain: their national vs. universal traits can not be determined only on the basis of their collections. This is true for the Museum of Ethnography, as well, where national and international holdings developed in parallel, helping each other, until World War I. However high we rate the significance of its universal holdings, these may never have developed into a full-fledged museum without the assistance of folk collections related to Hungary, which were increasingly appreciated in the light of their success at various great exhibitions (1873 Vienna, and the National Exhibition in 1885 and the Millennium Exhibition in 1896 in Budapest). Just as in other museum holdings in Hungary, the national collections assured legitimacy to the institution among politicians and the public. At the same time, as a great achievement of national orientation, these collections embraced the folk art of nationalities living in the Carpathian Basin, putting ethnic groups in context with each other, rather than in nationalistic rivalry. Universal and national private and public Also the Museum of Fine Arts which is most often among Hungarian museums interpreted as a pure universal collection for connoisseurs, without making proper reference to the very local, in some respect even provincial factors of its establishment is best seen as having been the common home to international as well as national art. Although the Prince Esterházy Collection was a non-national treasure of European importance, its gradual acquisition in the 1860s was due more to national pride than to serving a (non-existing) connoisseur public. Also the decisions in the foundation of the Museum of Fine Arts ( ), which incorporated the Esterházy Collection, involved highly controversial decisions, resulting in an ill-conceived ground floor for plaster casts of Classical sculpture. Granting the educational value of casts, the dichotomy of copies vs. originals came to haunt the museum. The subsequent Antiques Collection (1908) of the Museum of Fine Arts, comprising 8

9 originals, may though be seen as the fruit of a non-national orientation, but it is wise to remember that its acquisition before World War I was largely due to good chance and a few individuals enthusiasm. Not only the collections were thus far from a pure scholarly focus on a universal aesthetic, also the functions of this museum included many aspects from international representation by way of serving cultural tourism, to instructing Hungarian artists in classical aesthetic that were far from universal connoisseurship. Lest one should consider this a drawback, however, let us add that this coverage of the functions of governmental (thus, in a sense, national) cultural policy by the museum afforded a growing number of private collectors with liberty to engage in exquisite international art. Had the museum had the proper opportunity to incorporate these collections (e.g. Marcell Nemes, Adolf Kohner, Ferenc Hatvany), as it wanted to do in the 1910s, national and international art holdings would have developed by equal proportion. The failure of this plan was reminiscent of the failure to include earlier Hungarian private collections of considerable universal art (e.g. Viczay, Fejérváry-Pulszky, Böhm Collections) in the National Museum during the 19 th century. From this point of view, 19 th century museums in Hungary legitimately held a certain national priority in their collecting practice, since a significant number of private collections of universal aesthetic developed in parallel. The fault lay in the inability of cultural policy to incorporate as many of these private collections into the museums as possible. Thus the examination of national or universal art might as well be rephrased into national and universal art with the historical question remaining: why did this division of labour between museums and private collections not function better in the 19 th century, let alone in the 20 th, when this co-operation weakened a lot, deteriorating occasionally into hostility. Gábor Ébli Collegium Budapest Conference 2005 Sources on 19 th century museum history in Hungary Bacher, Béla and Gábor Ö. Pogány (eds.), A Szépmvészeti Múzeum (Budapest: Szépmvészeti Múzeum, 1956) Basics, Beatrix, Képtár és képcsarnok, in Bodnár Szilvia et al. (eds.), Maradandóság és változás. Mvészettörténeti konferencia: Ráckeve 2000 (Budapest: MTA MKI és Képz- és Iparmvészeti Lektorátus, 2004),

10 Batári, Ferenc, Art Nouveau Présentation des objets d art acquis à l occasion de l exposition universelle de Paris, Ars decorativa 1977, Belitska-Scholtz, Hedvig (ed.), Jankovich Miklós, a gyjt és mecénás, (Budapest: Akadémiai, 1985) Bodó, Sándor (ed.), Magyar múzeumi arcképcsarnok (Budapest: Pulszky Társaság Tarsoly Kiadó, 2002) Buzási, Enik (ed.), Fúri sgalériák, családi arcképek a Magyar Történelmi Képcsarnokból (Budapest: Magyar Nemzeti Galéria, 1988) Buzinkay, Géza (ed.), A Budapest Történeti Múzeum (Budapest: Corvina BTM, 1995) Cséfalvay, Pál és Ugrin Emese (eds.), Ipolyi Arnold emlékkönyv (Budapest: Szent István Társulat, 1989) Fejs, Imre, A Nemzeti Képcsarnok Alapító Egyesület története, Mvészettörténeti Értesít 6, 1957, Fejs, Imre, A Magyar Nemzeti Múzeum története I. ( ), Folia Archaeologica 16, 1964, Fejs, Imre, A Magyar Nemzeti Múzeum története II. ( ), Folia Archaeologica 17, 1965, Fejs, Zoltán (ed.), A Néprajzi Múzeum gyjteményei (Budapest: Néprajzi Múzeum, 2000) Fülep, Ferenc, 175 Years of the Hungarian National Museum, The New Hungarian Quarterly 69, 1977, Garas, Klára (ed.), The Budapest Museum of Fine Arts (Budapest: Corvina, 1985) Geskó, Judit és Molnos Péter, Francia impresszionista mvek gyjtése Magyarországon, in Geskó, Judit (ed.), Monet és barátai (Budapest: Szépmvészeti Múzeum, 2003), Halász, Zoltán, Károly Pulszky. Connoisseur, Founder of Museums, New Hungarian Quarterly 114, 1989, ; A Pulszkyak (Budapest:, 1987) Henszlmann, Imre, A Magyar Nemzeti Múzeum [1866], in Válogatott képzmvészeti írások, ed. Tímár Árpád (Budapest: MTA MKCs, 1990), Holló, Szilvia (ed.), A múzsák kertje. A magyar múzeumok születése (Budapest: BTM, 2002) Hölvényi, György (ed.), Pyrker János Emlékkönyv (Eger: Egri Fegyházmegye, 1987) Horváth, Hilda. Iparmvészeti kincsek Magyarországon. Tisztelet az adományozónak (Budapest: Athenaeum, 2000) Korek, József, A Magyar Nemzeti Múzeum története , Folia Archaeologica 17, 1965, Korek, József, Dokumentumok a 175 éves Magyar Nemzeti Múzeum történetébl, Múzeumi Közlemények 1977, Korek, József, Der Museumgedanke und die Sammlungsmethoden in Ungarn. Die ersten fünfzig Jahre des Ungarischen Nationalmuseums ( ), in Bernward Deneke und Rainer Kahsnitz (eds.) Das kunst-und kulturgeschichtliche Museum im 19. Jahrhundert (München: Prestel, 1977), Marosi, Ern (ed.), Die ungarische Kunstgeschichte und die Wiener Schule (Wien: MTA MKI und Collegium Hungaricum, 1983) Marosi, Ern (ed.), Ferenc Pulszky ( ) Memorial Exhibition (Budapest: MTA, 1997) Mátrai, Gábor (ed.), A Nemzeti Képcsarnok Alapító Egyesület Évkönyvei, I-VII., (Pest: MNM, 1852) Mátrai, Gábor (ed.) A Nemzeti Képcsarnok Alapító Egyesület Évkönyvei, VIII-XVI., (Pest: MNM, 1862) Mátrai, Gábor. A Magyar Nemzeti Múzeum korszakai (Pest: MNM, 1868) Matskási, István (ed.), A Magyar Természettudományi Múzeum (Budapest: MTM, 2000) Miklós, Pál (ed.), Collections of the Museum of Applied Arts (Budapest: Corvina, 1979) 10

11 Mikó, Árpád (ed.), Jankovich Miklós ( ) gyjteményei (Budapest: Magyar Nemzeti Galéria, 2002) Mravik, László (ed.), Pulszky Károly in Memoriam (Budapest: Szépmvészeti Múzeum, 1988) Peregriny, János (ed.), Országos Magyar Szépmvészeti Múzeum állagai (Budapest: Országos Magyar Szépmvészeti Múzeum, 1909 (1-2) 1914 (3) 1915 (4)) Pintér, János (ed.), A 200 éves Magyar Nemzeti Múzeum gyjteményei (Budapest: MNM, 2003) Pulszky, Ferenc, A múzeumokról, Budapesti Szemle, 1875 (VIII), Pulszky, Ferenc, Haladás és hanyatlás a mvészetben: és egy nemzeti múzeum berendezése [1852] Magyar Múzeumok 2, 1996, Pulszky, Károly (ed.), A Magyar Képtár ideiglenes lajstroma (Pest: Országos Képtár, 1881) Pulszky, Károly (ed.), Kalauz a Magyar Iparmvészeti Múzeum gyjteményéhez (Budapest: OMIM, 1874) Radisics, Jen (ed.), A Magyar Iparmvészeti Múzeum és gyjteménye (Budapest: OMIM, 1915) Sinkó, Katalin (ed.), Aranyérmek, ezüstkoszorúk. Mvészkultusz és mpártolás Magyarországon a 19. században (Budapest: Magyar Nemzeti Galéria, 1995) Sinkó, Katalin, Ékítményes rajz és festés. Ornamentika-elméletek 1900 körül, in Majkó, Katalin és Szke Annamária (eds.), A Mintarajztanodától a Képzmvészeti Fiskoláig (Budapest: Magyar Képzmvészeti Egyetem, 2002), Szalay, Imre et al. A Magyar Nemzeti Múzeum multja és jelene alapításának századik évfordulója alkalmából (Budapest: Hornyánszky, 1902) Szilágyi, János György, A Forty-Eighter s Vita Contemplativa: Ferenc Pulszky ( ), The Hungarian Quarterly 149, 1998, Szilágyi, János György, Pulszky Ferenc és a múzeum helyzete a századi európai kultúrában, Magyar Tudomány 8, 1995, Szinyei Merse, Anna (ed.), The Hungarian National Gallery (Budapest: Corvina, 1994) Szvoboda Dománszky, Gabriella, Az Esterházy Képtár a magyar fvárosban, Tanulmányok Budapest Múltjából XXVIII, 1999, Takács, Imre (ed.), Remekmvek alteregói (Budapest: Szépmvészeti Múzeum, 1999) Tamási, Judit (ed.), Heritage Protection within the Compass of Legal Regulation: From Law to Law. Stories from 120 Years of Institutional Heritage Protection (Budapest: National Board for the Protection of Historic Monuments, 2001) Tóth, Ferenc, Kortárs külföldi mvek vásárlása az épül Szépmvészeti Múzeum számára, Bodnár Szilvia et al. (eds.), Maradandóság és változás. Mvészettörténeti konferencia: Ráckeve 2000 (Budapest: MTA MKI és Képz- és Iparmvészeti Lektorátus, 2004), Vadas, Ferenc, Új nemzeti múzeum és könyvtár tervek a századfordulón, Ars Hungarica 1, 1994, Vámos-Lovay, Zsuzsanna, Zur Entstehung der Sammlung des Museums für Angewandte Kunst, in Wilfried Seipel (ed.), Zeit des Aufbruchs. Budapest und Wien zwischen Historismus and Avantgarde (Wien: Kunsthistorisches Museum, 2003), -. 11