COURAGE

connecting collections

The family collection of Árpád Göncz was collected and preserved mainly by the Göncz couple as a private collection for decades. From 1990 onward, when Árpád Göncz was elected President of the Hungarian Republic, many new private and semi-official records and objects (e.g. letters, books, photos, presents, prizes, etc.) were added. Since 2013, the newly established Árpád Göncz Foundation has been responsible for the collection, of which the owner is presently Zsuzsanna Göntér, the widow of the late president.

The letters which comprise the Juliana Jirousová collection at the Libri Prohibiti were transferred to Prague on 11 May 2013 from Prostřední Vydří, where Františka Jirousová and Jana Bauerová discovered and began collecting them. The letters were handed over to Jiří Gruntorád and filed in the Libri Prohibiti library. Jiří Gruntorád also received letters from Juliana Jirousová, although the date is unknown.

The permanent exhibition of the Contemporary Collection that was rearranged in November 2013 presents a selection of post-war Hungarian art. One must emphasize here the word selection, as altogether a hundred-fifty works are on display from nearly twelve thousand items in the collection.

The display arranges the works into sections of loose chronological order (post-surreal tendencies, art after socialist realism, from surnaturalism to the effect of pop art, Iparterv, avant-garde tendencies in the seventies, “conceptual art,” and photorealism, post-socialism), while commensurable aspects are highlighted.

It was an important selection criterion to find works linking with international tendencies, which, as an accentuated aspect, is a significant difference from the previous arrangement of the permanent exhibition. Three groups of works introduce the chronological division (constructions, machines, edifices, installations in the dome), and two significant sculptures from the sixties and seventies, accompanied by photographs.

The curator said in an interview that he envisioned an audience of foreign visitors interested in Hungarian art, but without much concrete knowledge, as well as young people under the age of 35, and he arranged the sections and the introductory text blocks with these target groups in mind. The texts lead the visitors through the exhibition by quoting thoughts from essays of the given periods, with the exception of the last section, which entirely relies on the curator’s conclusions.

The last two sections also reveal gaps in the collection, as installation and media art are underrepresented compared to their historical significance, with only a very few works on display. In this context the curator said in an interview that he wanted to create a picture of the collection instead of presenting the entire history of Hungarian contemporary art—and thus to get a complete overview one has to visit the permanent exhibition of Ludwig Museum Budapest as well.

Velid Đekić's book Red! River! Rock! deals with the Rijeka rock scene during 1960s. Đekić comprehensively presents the performers, dance halls, composers, instrument makers, disc-jockeys and photographers who formed the rock scene. The book testifies to the fact that young people in Rijeka were pioneers of rock 'n' roll not only in Yugoslavia but among other socialist states in Europe as well. Although Rijeka was in a monolithic one-party state, rock 'n' roll was a window to the West for the city’s youth.

The book shows that thanks to rock 'n' roll, young people expanded their horizons through a different form of entertainment than those who propagated communist authority and openly defied the imposed framework. Ultimately, the book functions as a sort of musical lexicon because it provides extensive information about the line-ups of bands, the years of their foundation and dissolution, repertoires, popularity and song-writing.