Protest against the Merger of the Hungarian National Gallery with the Museum of Fine Arts

On 29 February 2012 the Hungarian National Gallery will cease to exist as an independent institution. Something unprecedented will happen: without plausible or acceptable explanation, with unreasonable and incredible haste, and within four months, the independence of a 55-year-old internationally acknowledged institution, one of Hungary’s leading museums, will be eliminated. By being merged into the Museum of Fine Arts, which is about the same size and has an international field of interest, the Hungarian National Gallery – the main institution entrusted with the collection and maintenance of Hungarian works of art – will lose its institutional and curatorial independence. The justification given for this hasty merger gives rise to the fear that in the future there will be no venue to present Hungarian art in all its richness and complexity from the earliest times to the present day, to the loss of the visitors interested in this field of culture. The unwelcome transfer of the more than 130,000 works of art connected with the ill-conceived merger will be an incalculable burden to the central budget and will expose these invaluable treasures of Hungarian cultural heritage to grave risks.
It is not too late to stand up against it.

Budapest, December 2011

CSc Enik Buzási
Art Historian, Senior Scientific Fellow (retired) of the Hungarian National Gallery, Budapest

Eszter Gábor
Art Historian, Senior Scientific Fellow (retired) of the Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest

dr. Katalin Sinkó
Art Historian, Senior Scientific Fellow (retired) of the Hungarian National Gallery, Budapest

You can see the signatories and sign the petition here: http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/mng/