Following last year’s exhibition “Ordered Memory: Hungarian Exhibitions in Auschwitz, 1960/1965” at the Central Gallery of the Blinken OSA Archivum, a virtual version of the exhibition will be made available on the occasion of the Holocaust Victims’ Memorial Day in Hungary:
https://megrendeltemlekezet.osaarchivum.org/
The project presents the completely forgotten but exceptional works of art exhibited at the first Hungarian exhibition at Auschwitz in 1960, as well as the monumental collection of art commissioned for the 1965 permanent exhibition at the same site. Together with the earliest Hungarian works of art dealing with the Roma Holocaust, the virtual exhibition highlights the absence of the subject in exhibitions in the 1960s.
The 1960 and 1965 Auschwitz exhibitions were among the earliest projects of official memory policy, both representing Hungary abroad in an international context while externalising the memory of the Holocaust. The project will show that although the works commissioned for the Auschwitz exhibition were originally created as illustrations of anti-fascist memory politics, the works and their critical reception have contributed significantly to the development and shaping of Holocaust memory in Hungary.
Earlier, in 2004, the Blinken OSA Archivum reconstructed the historical parts of the Hungarian exhibitions at Auschwitz. An online reconstruction of the 2004 exhibition is also available (in Hungarian):