The exhibition entitled Replay has come about due to close cooperation between the Friends of Contemporary Art Non-profit Ltd. of the Contemporary Collection of the Museum of Fine Arts and the Hungarian National Gallery and the Museum of Fine Arts – Hungarian National Gallery, Budapest. The Circle of Patrons was established in 2021 by six dedicated collectors of contemporary art, with the aim of contributing to the expansion of the contemporary collection of the Museum of Fine Arts and the Hungarian National Gallery, modelled on similar associations that support acquisitions of new works by the Tate Modern in London and the Centre Pompidou in Paris.
Each year, the curators of the Contemporary Collection and the Collection of Prints and Drawings of the Hungarian National Gallery, the Collection of International Art after 1800 and the Collection of Prints and Drawings of the Museum of Fine Arts compile a list of proposed acquisitions, from which the members of the company select the works to be purchased. This collaboration represents a new form of cooperation between art collectors and the museum and its curators, unprecedented in Hungary.
The Circle of Patrons expanded throughout 2022, resulting in the opportunity to purchase artworks for the museum’s collections at a total value of around twenty million forints. The acquisitions made in 2022, and therefore the present exhibition, were developed around a unified concept, starting out from the historic changes that took place in Central Europe in 1990. The exhibited works focus primarily on the regime change and on the visuality of Central Europe’s common historical past. The artworks, created by artists from Hungary and its not-too-distant neighbouring countries, not only conduct dialogue with each other, but are also closely linked, historically and thematically, to the rich holdings of the Collection of Prints and Drawings and the Collection of International Art after 1800 at the Museum of Fine Arts, and the Contemporary Collection at the Hungarian National Gallery.
Works by six artists were added to the museum’s collection as part of the 2022 acquisition. The works by Sabine Moritz and Svätopluk Mikyta align perfectly with the pieces belonging to the international collection of the Museum of Fine Arts and the contemporary Hungarian collection of the Hungarian National Gallery which deal with the experience of war and dictatorship in the twentieth century in its broader context. Those by Johanna Kandl, Ákos Birkás, Csaba Nemes, and Ágnes Uray-Szépfalvi not only seek answers to the social and political questions of the years spanning the fall of communism, but also direct attention to the social phenomena of the present day. The exhibited works reflect on the traumas suffered jointly by the region from several perspectives and provides space for the narratives of collective memory and for personal histories alike.
This show is also intended as a foretaste of the permanent exhibition of the planned New Hungarian National Gallery, which will bring together works from the Collection of Prints and Drawings and the Collection of International Art after 1800 at the Museum of Fine Arts, and the Contemporary Collection at the Hungarian National Gallery.