Cultural Revelation: When & Where New Hungarian National Gallery Expected to Open

  • 4 Oct 2024 7:29 AM
Cultural Revelation: When & Where New Hungarian National Gallery Expected to Open
Construction of the new National Gallery is scheduled to start in the City Park next year and open its doors to the public by the end of this decade, the company in charge of the project, Varosliget Zrt, said on Thursday.

The planned gallery now has a valid building permit and a public procurement procedure has begun. It will be built on the site of the previously demolished Petofi Hall, and will host the modern collections of the Museum of Fine Arts and the Hungarian National Gallery.

Together with the new National Gallery, the most important national exhibition spaces covering photography, ethnography, music and visual arts will be accessible along a single walking axis, "which is unique in the world", the company's statement said.

Hungary's government is committed to its construction, an essential element of the renovated City Park, making the park an attractive cultural quarter and putting it on the cultural map of Europe, the statement added.

An international jury selected the plans of Pritzker Prize-winning Japanese architecture firm SANAA.

Budapest Liget is currently Europe's largest-scale cultural urban development project, the statement said.

At a government news briefing today, the head of the prime minister's office, Gergely Gulyas, said he was aware that the project manager had announced a conditional public procurement procedure. "It doesn't amount to much yet, only that we'll see how much it would cost to build it".

Source: 
MTI - The Hungarian News Agency, founded in 1881.

More on new National Gallery

As part of the Liget Budapest Project, the New National Gallery will be constructed based on the designs of Pritzker Prize-winning architects SANAA (Sejima and Nishizawa and Associates) on the former site of the Petőfi Csarnok concert venue.

The architects of the new museum were selected following an international tender process. For the winning design, the Japanese architects envisioned an interactive and welcoming, yet modern 21st century building to occupy the Városliget.

The Japanese firm already has a number of outstanding museum buildings to its name, including the new Louvre Museum in Lens and the New Contemporary Art Museum in New York.

The new Budapest institution will house the combined modern collections of the Museum of Fine Arts and the Hungarian National Gallery, returning to the tradition of presenting masterpieces of Hungarian and international fine art together as it was in the Museum of Fine Arts in the 50s and as is customary all over Europe.

In addition, the new gallery will be the largest museum in Hungary to chronicle the modern development of European fine art by collecting, preserving and displaying the outstanding works of Hungarian and world art history from the 19th century.

The New National Gallery will find a home in a building of almost 50,000 square metres that is modern even by global standards. It meets the challenges of the 21st century while also befitting the institutions of the Városliget built more than 100 years ago, as well as celebrating one of the country's most important art collections. 

The new museum has taken on the mission of not only preserving the legacy entrusted to it, but also of extending this to the public in the form of an institution that can be accessed and experienced by as wide an audience as possible.

The permanent exhibitions to be housed in the gallery will be more comprehensive than ever, while engaging temporary exhibitions and associated artistic programmes will make the venue an exciting centre of 21st century Hungarian and European artistic life.

Source: 
Budapest Liget Project

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