Photo: MNB Arts&Culture
Joakim Scheffer
30/08/2024 06:00
Shanghai, Beijing, Shenzhen, Wuhan are just a few of the Chinese metropolises where the exhibition series "The Journey – János Fajó and the Pesti Workshop", a joint project of MNB Arts and Culture, the MNB's contemporary collection curator, and the Fajó Foundation, has been presented in the past year. The Kossuth Prize-winning painter, who died in 2018, and the work of the Pesti Workshop, founded by him and prominent figures of the neo-avant-garde scene of the 1980s, have been visited by hundreds of thousands of visitors over the past twelve months, and the success of the exhibition series is undeniable - as is shown by the fact that the tour, originally planned for six months, had to be extended due to the great interest shown.
The reader might ask: what does a state's central bank have to do with art and why is it organising exhibitions, and abroad? Strange as it may sound at first sight, most European central banks have art collections, with the Belgian, French, German and Spanish central banks being particularly prominent in this field. The Magyar Nemzeti Bank's collection is relatively recent, with most of the acquisitions made during the pandemic, around 1,500 works of art, and a focus on the neo-avant-garde generation of artists who came on the scene in the 1960s and 1970s - alongside János Fajó, we can also find names such as Dóra Maurer and Ilona Keserü.
As both the international and the domestic art market were in a difficult situation during the covid epidemic, the MNB also threw a kind of lifeline to artists and Hungarian galleries. They also aim to promote Hungarian artists in the international canon - in addition to the current series of exhibitions, there have been shows in Abu Dhabi, Seoul, Berlin and Brussels.
The first stop of the Chinese exhibition series was the Liu Haisu Museum of Fine Arts in Shanghai, where several important professionals attended the opening ceremony, including Huang Xuejun, Deputy General Manager of the Shanghai branch of the Bank of China. Among the venues was the Museum of Fine Arts of China in Beijing, where György Matolcsy, Governor of the Magyar Nemzeti Bank, visited the exhibition. In Chongqing, a city with a population of more than 30 million, the exhibition was shown in two museums, the Yuleai Art Museum, which opened in 2019, and the works of János Fajó and the artists of the Pesti Workshop. The final venue for the exhibition was Shenzhen, China's "Silicon Valley", which has been emerging as a technology and innovation hub in recent years.
MNB Arts and Culture attaches great importance to museum education, so in addition to the exhibitions, visitors were also able to take part in various workshops. And as well as bringing the names of Hungarian artists to Asia, such initiatives are particularly important in strengthening cultural ties between countries.
The author is the editor of Eurasia