Praxis, Literatur, Wissenschaft Zustand und Aussichten der Ungarischen Kunstgeschichte, 1996–2011

Abstract

Is the text of a lecture, delivered by the author, acting as president of the Commission for Art History of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences on a conference of art historians in November 2012. This preliminary text of the official report, which was submitted to and discussed by the Class for Philosophical and Historical Sciences of the Hungarian Academy, is a summary from the personal point of view of the author. It is focused mainly on three points of the analysis of the evolution of art history in the one and a half decades between 1996 and 2011. 1) The criteria of the valuation of scientific activities in art history mainly prefer classical art history and its publication forms in the same time as scientific (but not published) activities of museum keepers and curators as well as publications of curators and art critics not corresponding to scientific publication criteria do not acknowledged enough. 2) There is a remarkable swift in the character of publications in the overlooked period: manuals, lexica and scientific catalogues of collections — all team works — became rarer and monographic studies, exhibition catalogues as well as individual works are dominating. 3) The period between 1996 and 2011 bears the traits of a transitional period in the historiography of art. The changes were determined by the introduction of market economy and its impact in Hungary, by the changing of finances of art historical research and the changes of the institutions — from the Universities (“Bologna-system”) through the transformation of the Research Institute of Art History of the Academy of Sciences to the fusion of leading Art Museums of the Country and the dissolution of the National Office of the Cultural Heritage. So, in course of official measures of the year 2012 the whole institutional background of the Hungarian art history was transformed.