Meeting at the Műcsarnok
Posted by Ákos Maróy on April 3rd, 2008, filed in development diary
Yesterday we had a great meeting at the Műcsarnok (literally – Arts Hall, I wonder why they brand themselves as Kunsthalle on their English site, and not have a proper English name). Műcsarnok is the organization hosting the Venice Biennale Hungarian Pavilion project, and it is within their framework that the Corpora exhibition will be made there.
They are very nice and operative people, and I’m sure it will be fruitful to work with them.
Work in the near future will focus on visiting the venue and recording the surroundings, with focus especially on the placement of cameras on neighboring buildings, so that we’ll have good live imagery for the augmented reality viewports. We’ll also finalize the budget in a week, and see how short we are (unfortunately we are short, see also my previous post). Preparations for the catalogue needs to be started soon as well among other things.
Lots and lots of organization, when I’d really like to work on the artwork itself…
On the name of Arts Hall-Műcsarnok-Kunsthalle/Budapest (little bit offtopic)
The lack of proper English name for this organization comes from the function of the building, in which it is physically functions. As this organization helps to realize the Corpora project, I would like to share some background information on origin of the ‘improper English name’.
The nowadays building, which is located on one of the main squares of Budapest, just opposite of the monumental building of the Museum of Fine Arts, was built along with the rest of the area, at the end of the 19th century as a part of a large cultural investment for the celebrating of the foundation of Hungary.
Yet, the building, which was made from glass and a metal frame, and was originally meant to be temporal, serving as a exhibition space similar to the nowadays exhibition centers, in which international shows like CeBIT take place. That time, most of the large European cities had one of these, but most of them were becoming obsolete or had been destroyed in the last hundred years, just take the London Crystal Place as an example.
Budapest, after a few years of usage, have decided to reinforce this one, by replacing the glass walls with solid brick and reinforcing the structure. Yet, a new name and function should have been added to the building, so they decided to call it Kunsthalle after the buildings which is used to exhibit contemporary art and organizing fairs and shows in the German language territory.
These Kunsthalles were more or less independent “empty” halls to exhibit whatever the owner liked, basically they were free to rent for any show, and in most cases they were run by the local municipality or by a private owner. Unlike the original building of the Műcsarnok, they were meant to be permanent, but without storage space – this fact might limit the functions as such, by the way.
What made them very special was the fact that they were exclusively used in countries associated with heavy German influence, and their complete absence from English language countries. And since the phenomenon of “contemporary art” as such is not coming from a German cultural system as such, but rather a English/French one, (just think about the basic exhibition venues of art in the last hundred years), these types of buildings could not be matched to any, but only to the German Kunsthalle, so for art professionals it is much easier to relate Műcsarnok as a Kunsthalle, rather then “a site without a collection”, “big empty space with really bad shape and logistics”, because by association it with these similar buildings, people who are familiar with the German model might immediately understand its function.
You might very well understand ‘Art’ does not have a ‘Halls’ – that simply not how we call exhibition spaces around the world, therefore it is easier to relate to the idea of the German counterpart.
So this is a sort etymology of the name, yet more question comes, like ‘why does it impossible to have a ‘Arts Hall’ in London or New York, but since this one is becoming a monster comment already, I would rather not answer it now.