COURAGE

Підключення Колекцій

9–21 December 1989

Young Artists’ Club, Budapest

The reconstruction of the exhibition entitled Hungary Can Be Yours!, which was banned in 1984. The same artefacts were placed in the same space, exactly where they had been five years earlier. However, the opening program was different from the one originally held: the public was able to participate in the roundtable discussion among the ‘banned’ and the ‘banners’: György Galántai, Lajos Kiss, Attila Zsigmond and Tamás Török. The discussion was moderated by Péter Rózsa. The event was documented on video and a catalogue was made.

May 21 - June 29, 1989, Greek Church Exhibition Hall, Vác. Opened by Dr. Lajos Németh

As part of the research program on the establishment of the collection, József Bárdosi curated the exhibition entitled Revitalized mimesis (1955-1988), with which he designated the path of collection development in the long run. He selected a figurative works which in some form reflect on the social reality of the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s.

This reflection is formulated on the language of realism understood in quotation marks, informed by critical, conceptual, minimalist, hyperrealist, and radical tendencies. The local types of hyperrealism inverted the original intentions of the movement in order to formulate their political or aesthetic messages.

Artists exhibited: Márton Barabás, Sándor Bernáth(y), Ákos Birkás, Tibor Csenus, Gábor Czene, László Dinnyés, László Fehér, Tamás Gál, László Gyémánt, György Jovián, Ádám Kéri, László Kéri, Imre Kocsis, Gyula Konkoly, György Korga, László Lakner, István Mácsai, György Marosvári, László Méhes, István Pál Nolipa, István Nyári, András Orvos, László Patay, Péter Sarkadi, Ágnes Szakáll, Attila Székelyhidi, Ákos Szabó, Iván Szkok, Zoltán Tardos, Noémi Tamás, Róbert Várady, László Varkoly, Gábor Záborszky, Gábor Zrínyifalvi.

Shortly before his death, the Czech art critic Jindřich Chalupecký decided to sell part of his written legacy to the Museum of Czech Literature. Following his agreement with Marie Krulichová, an employee of the acquisition department of the Literary Archives of the Museum of Czech Literature, he sold his correspondence and some of his friends’ manuscripts to the Museum in the spring of 1989. At that time, the control of the communist regime weakened and the Museum of Czech Literature supported unofficial artists and writers through similar purchases of their documents. The collection of correspondence contained, for example, letters from Czech artists Kurt Gebauer, Eva Kmentová, Jiří Kolář, Karel Nepraš, Zbyněk Sekal or Adriena Šimotová. Chalupecký also corresponded with Canadian translator and writer Paul Wilson, who was expelled from Czechoslovakia in 1977, and with Czech writer and literary historian living in the United States, Milada Součková. The collection of correspondence contained almost 2000 letters. Together with the correspondence, Chalupecký also sold some of his friends’ manuscripts (ca. 750 pages), for example poems of Josef Kainar or Josef Škvorecký, to the Museum. The extent of this part of the Jindřich Chalupecký Collection, sold to the Museum of Czech Literature in 1989, totalled 6 cartons (boxes).

The Jindřich Chalupecký collection was later extended. The majority of materials were given to the Museum by Chalupecký’s wife, poet and translator, Jiřina Hauková, in the 1990s. Some documents became part of the collection later, after Jiřina Hauková’s death in 2005. Nowadays, the collection is stored in 51 carton (boxes).

The 1956 Research Institute was established at the initiative of twenty intellectuals from both Hungary and abroad on 17 June 1989, one day after Imre Nagy and his fellow martyrs were publicly reburied. The mission of the new institute was to research and document the history of Hungarian Revolution of 1956.

The editors of the Black Box “video periodical” preferred to have official permission from the start, though it was not at all easy to obtain due to the novelty and odd category of video publication that fell outside of any established legal categories, and the cautious decision makers of the late communist bureaucracy.