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Report on Museums of Hungary, 2005
Dr. Tamás Vásárhelyi and Dr. György Balázs[1]
In a country like ours, change seems to be a basic phenomenon for constitution and institution, for laws and museums as well as for the public. In this paper we give a little panorama of the situation, with emphasis on the changes which happened and do happen in our museum system.
Hungary has an area of 93.000 square kilometre and 10 million inhabitants. The country turned from Socialist People’s Republic to Republic of Hungary in 1989. The initial enthusiasm gave its place to scepticism, to bad and good experiences of „freedom”, and to conscious construction of social and private life. We have a developing democracy, free elections, (so far opposite political side won at each election, so we had strong changes down in the governments too). This does not affect museums specifically and directly, but economic power and cultural policy changes do. In 1992 the Public employee Act described and fixed the situation of most museum employees, bringing moderate salaries but moderate safety of jobs. The public employee sphere is in permanent dependency from the economic situation of the country, and slowly their number decreased. There is greater difference between rich and poor people now than before, the majority feels a decrease in their financial situation. This heavily affected the cultural habits of Hungarians too.
All cultural areas suffered from the economic and political changes, but slowly they started to recover. Now there are many TV-channels, cable TV-networks in each large or middle-size towns. American films and now internationally licensed shows dominate the choice. There is no museum program on tv, and only one broadcasting on a local radio-station. Video is popular, DVD is coming up. „Multiplex” movies started to attract people, and now are abandoned. American films dominate, in the last years there are several good and successful Hungarian films again. There is a boom in book publishing. Cultural tourism is growing. Visiting shopping centers became a fashion for huge masses of people. Museums now do have their competitors.
Some statistics on museums in Hungary
There are officially more than 800 museum-like institutions in Hungary. There are 148 museums with all three main functions: collecting, recording and preserving; scientific study by curators; exhibitions and education. Of these 24 are supported by the government. There are 14 large „national museums” and the 19 counties of Hungary have a „County museum network” each. These are the larger museums, usually with their own, characteristic building or group of buildings and a staff between 50 and 300.
The rest are museal collections, exhibition sites, and different other forms of cultural institutions. Zoos, arboretums and similar sites are not counted to museums in Hungary.
Of all museum institutions in Hungary there are under state ownership 13,5 % (with 25% of objects, 40 % of professionals and 30 % of visitors). County and local municipalities support 67,5 %, foundations 4,5 %, for profit sphere 7,5 %, churches 4 % and private persons 3 %.
Type of museums according to size and scope
Some characteristic types are:
A. “One person museum” - small museum with a few employees, one of which is graduate, working in the most different fields (from book-keeping to education, from science to exhibition-making). Many little museums or exhibition places lost the support due to their disappearing local communities.
B. Smaller local (village) museums: one or few graduate employees, with multiple responsibilities.
C. Regional museums: normally with a few graduate, multifunctional employees. These and the smaller local museums often belong to one of the “county museum networks” (one network in each of the 19 counties of Hungary).
D. Specialised museums (e.g. mining, textile industry, post, etc): with one or few graduate staff members, often coming from the relevant industry/field as a change of career. Industrial museums could gain rich collections from the collapsing industry, some new museums were also funded for the memories of bankrupted factories or industries.
E. County museums (19 in Hungary): with 5-15 graduate employees, working in various academic departments (from archaeology to local or natural history).
F. National (government supported) museums (14): larger, with 10-60 graduate employees, many researchers among them. Purely academic (research) as well as purely collection orientation is possible. Most museums have separate departments for recording, exhibition making and education, but contribution from curators is expected in all these fields. There are a few substantial museum reconstructions, e.g. Museum of Fine Arts, Hungarian National Museum, Hungarian Natural History Museum.
There is a steady shift from collection or research oriented museum towards the visitor oriented museum with obvious changes in the duties of curators and the other types of staff.
Museum policy
Hungary belongs to those countries where cultural fields and especially museum life is regulated by special museum laws. The last coherent regulation of museum activities was announced in the 1960-ies, when the county museum network and economical reforms were launched. Not only the passing 40 years motivated renewing the laws (opening the ecclesiastical collections, the possibility of computer based inventory system) but the changing of the regime in 1989 as well. The last laws in connection of cultural heritage, which caused the total transformation of the legal surroundings determining the work of museums originated from 1997 (the law about museums and public collections, public library services and public education) and 2001 (the law of protection of cultural heritage).
From the beginning, from the 1930-ies up to 1997 museum field was regulated by rules and orders on a lower level, so announcing the museum law signifies the importance of this field. These laws integrate the main fields of cultural heritage: artefacts belong either to museum or private properties; archaeological sites and historic monuments. The diverse proprietary system is accepted, but professional guidance is ensured by these laws, provided by the Ministry of Cultural Heritage. Laws try to maintain our cultural heritage and ensure their availability for everybody but also focus on financial responsibility of the state (normative supports for county municipalities are required, as among municipalities it is compulsory only for the county municipalities to operate museum network in Hungary).
The museum, public library and public education law of 1997 regulates terms and conditions of the foundation and termination of museums, articulates the essence and tasks of museums as an institutions, fixes professional categorisation (national, county area museums, public interest museum collections, places of exhibitions ) and ensures the financial resources of institutions.
The law about the protection of cultural heritage of 2001 regulates:
- Protection of archaeological heritage (archaeological sites protection, excavation).
- Protection of historical monuments, (classification of protected buildings, maintenance and usage of special objects of historical value: historical gardens, cemeteries, burial places, historical monuments) including.
- Protection of cultural commodities (classification of cultural commodities as protected, termination of protection, permission of transportation abroad).
- Structure of tasks of the Cultural Heritage Inspectorate (authoritative tasks, issue of permissions, registration, permissions for transportation abroad, availability of cultural heritage commodities, pre-emption, expropriation, approximation of European legal regulation).
On the basis of the two laws several other legal regulations were issued unifying and updating professional expectations towards museums like regulating compulsory registration of museums; modification of National Cultural Basic Program implementation of 1993. 23. law financing the cultural area in a tender system; regulation about organised education system of cultural experts, requirements, conditions, and financing; regulation of staff, their professional requirements enabling them to be employed in museums; regulation about classification as protected cultural heritage; regulation of permissions for cultural commodities transported abroad; regulation of permissions for cultural experts and running a list of professional experts; regulation about the professional supervision for museums.
New regulation about professional norms of museums and regulation of procedures are still missing among others.
Buildings, services, infrastructure
Very few buildings were built for museums since World War II. Conditions are rather poor in small places and sometimes museums are placed in old buildings which were not built for public use, but house museums. Recently the government supported “Alpha Program” offers grants for refurbishing, reconstruction, construction infrastructure for disabled, etc, but often there is no money to reconstruct wet buildings, or to solve other major problems. Reconstruction of a few national museums is run slowly but continuously. In the last 5 years 3 large, government-supported museums have been opened: House of Terror Museum, Holocaust Museum and a new Palace of Arts, which houses the Ludwig Museum, Budapest.
Financial support of museums
Museums get their support mainly from the state: 24 government supported museums directly, 19 county network museums (and these networks consist of several museums) from local municipalities, which get it from the parliament (as normative support). The process of taking the heritage from communities and incorporating them into the state property ruined in many cases the feeling of ownership, responsibility in the local communities. This effect was multiplied by the process of local people moving out from smaller settlements, thus weakening of communities.
There are museums run by foundation or community and there are some private or church owned ones too. A new wave of museums run by foundation came with the political changes, when whole industries ceased to exist, and their relicts were collected and preserved by enthusiastic persons of that area.
Museums are in trouble, because the support is often not sufficient. Still collections grow and exhibitions open (near 3000 a year, small and large), although some museums are closed, others suffer. Many museums „stand on several feet” financially and they are stabile, developing. On average 63% of the budget is coming from the providers, 23% from project supports and 14% is self generated income (admission, shop, sponsorship etc.).
We have some funds (mainly the National Cultural Fund) which offer grants to various projects. Great over-application often occurs. Hungary can be equal partner in scientific and cultural EU projects and grant proposals, and this is a growing resource to our museums too, although many are afraid from the difficult procedures of these projects. Sponsorships are growing in value, but very far from that of old democracies and rich countries. Some museums have permanent sponsors.
A few years ago PR and marketing started to develop enormously in the Hungarian museum world, starting with a conference in 1994, and followed by similar others, workshops, studies, open marketing funds etc.. The first Museum marketing book was published, and recently some museums published about their marketing strategy.
On museum professionals
There are some 2000 graduates among the 6000 employees working in the Hungarian museum system: besides curators (cca 1100) managers, collection managers, restorers, educators, financial managers, editors, etc. Most managers come from an academic field, and get training in management during years of museum service. Recently some museums were closed, the employees, curators too, had to change their career, and this is expected to happen in the near future too.
The typical museum professional in Hungary is a public employee. This means fixed steps in the career, where salary levels, titles are depending on the level of education and the number of years in public service. The salary is relatively low, in access more safety is offered in the positions. Due to financial situation of museums in Hungary, better or more work is rarely honoured financially. There is a very deep and strong devotedness (towards protection of cultural heritage) in general in the museum society in Hungary and this is often complementing the lack of finances.
Education of museum staff
Typical types of background for curators are:
- researchers (archaeologist, historian, art historian, ethnographer, naturalist etc.)
- teachers (history, art, literature, biology, geography etc.)
- engineers (from the oil, textile, food, transport etc. industry etc.), etc.
- a few private collectors, amateur researchers (coming from the most various fields) get training, or even graduation and a degree during decades of museum work.
We may mention a general trend, that while the number of students attending higher education increased substantially in recent years, the university level graduate education gives more generalised knowledge and expertise now, than before. Curators come with wider and shallower knowledge on the academic field.
Museology course or subject is rare. In archaeology, contemporary history, ethnography and art history, studies on the subject museology is taught, each only in one or few universities in Hungary (in 6 different towns). Conservation, restoration on university level can be studied in one university. Museum education grade can be obtained in one university only, as a second diploma. Many of the workers in education departments get a degree as cultural manager.
Recently 120 hours per 7 years postgraduate training is an obligation for many public employees: teachers, librarians and museum professionals (with maturity or higher education). Museum topics like collection management and museum management courses are under accreditation. This system is new, not yet optimally working, not offering specialised, much needed museum topics. Collection management studies (400 hours) is offered by one museum to professionals with maturation.
Civic connections
There are two associations in the Hungarian museum world cooperating in the publication and observation of the international professional and ethical norms and the unified professional requirement systems.
Tasks of ICOM Hungarian National Committee is to help the Hungarian development of museology by harmonising the activity of Hungarian and international organisations. It also supports the spread and implementation of goals, purposes, plans of ICOM among Hungarian museums and staff. It also helps members to participate in the international museum life and the work of scientific and professional committees, events of ICOM.
Pulszky Society – Association of Hungarian Museums was founded in 1991. It helps the Hungarian museums to implement their tasks, to increase their image and social acceptance by Pulszky Society’s authority and professional weight. It also wants social recognition of professional results and values. The Pulszky Society is in continuous relationship with the owners of museums (ministries, municipalities, institutions, foundations, organisations, companies), supports their activity to protect and popularise national cultural heritage, articulates opinions, initiates actions in issues related to museums and the protection of cultural heritage. The society protects and represents the interests of people working in museums or elsewhere, tries to create and maintain work ethic, helps strengthening the love for profession of museum staff, and education of them, and cooperates with other, similar national and international professional organisations, societies, institutions, works for maintaining relationship with other staff and exchange of information. The Pulszky Society works for letting the activities of Hungarian museums known internationally, and helps personal and organised exchange of experiences.
Pulszky Society and ICOM HungarianNationalCommittee work for the following purposes in preparation for the EU integration jointly:
-issue the Code of Ethics of Hungarian Museums;
-prepares and makes the accreditation system of Hungarian Museums accepted;
-works out the professional system of requirements and career norms of Hungarian Museums;
-Prepares a recommendation of museum standards to Ministry of Cultural Heritage ;
-Supervise the conditions of establishing a „Chamber of Museum”;
-In the course of regionalisation it participates in the professional planning of the museum area;
-Harmonises international relationships, helps its members to participate in national and international professional forums;
-Initiates organisation of professional conferences nationally and internationally.
Exhibitions
Many of our exhibitions were built in the seventies, eighties, but also many museums made reconstructions or completed refurbishing recently. In the last two years more foreign wandering or temporary exhibitions has been opened in Hungary (Monet, Picasso, Dalí, Four centuries of French painting, as well as leading natural history exhibitions like Dino-Birds or Gems Paradise) and the number of Hungarian exhibitions abroad is also increasing. The number and variety of exhibition-related programs is growing rapidly. While even children are educated regularly by curators in smaller museums, many larger museums have education staff or department. Educators are often considered “maiden for all” in museums. Education departments often deal with marketing, PR, exhibitions, services for programs in the hired spaces etc.
Museums and their visitors
Below there is a graph showing the number of all visitors in more than 3 decades. The numbers are results of a forced education wave in the 70-tieth, the rising living costs and entrance fees in the 80-tieth, the enormously growing cultural competition in the 90-tieth.
Opening of museums, the growing public orientation does not show its effect yet in overall visitor numbers.
Change in the total number of visitors in Hungarian museums in the last 4 decades
Joint museum programs
There are a few centrally organised programs, e.g.:
Museums May Festival – a weekend around the International Museums Day. 60-90 museums are present in tents, with various programs, objects, publications, consultations. Dance, music, puppet theatre and similar programs run on two stages. Food, drinks and handicrafts are also sold.
Long night of museums – mid-summer event, several museums are open until midnight (or later), with special programs, music performances etc. The popularity is increasing.