2001

The Millenary Exhibition
December 31, 2001 - February 28, 2002

Our new exhibition focuses on the millennial events, programmes and works of art that received public funding in Hungary. This is the only exhibition so far that has tried to give an overall picture of the kinds of official programmes and centrally sponsored works that were created on the occasion of the millennium. To collect this material, we turned for help to the state institutions that organised, subsidised and documented these events, including the Millennium Commissary Office, the Ministry of Cultural Heritage, the Religious Editorial staff of the Hungarian Television, Duna Television, the Hungarian Radio, the Hungarian Post Office, the Coin Trade Joint Stock Company of the Hungarian National Bank, the Office for the Protection of Historic Monuments (previously the Committee for the Protection of Historic Monuments) and the...

 
Hungary Can Be Yours!
October 27, 2001 - December 2, 2001

Alternative country image reconstruction from 1984 - with secret police documents. The exhibition was open to visitors from the 27 October - 2 December 2001.

In the art of the 80's, mail art was what the unlimited World Wide Web is for us today. Contrary to other forms of "art", mail art was neither a medium, nor a trend, but instead a chaotic, random interactive surface open to free movement that (theoretically) could only be governed by postal restrictions.

György Galántai originally intended the materials of the "Hungary Can Be Yours / International Hungary" exhibition for the Hungary issue of Commonpress mail art magazine and it only became an exhibition at the request of the Young Artists' Club. In Orwell's year, in the era of the 'happiest barrack', the image flowing from the works of 46 Hungarian and 58 artists from...

 
Bodies in Formation
May 17, 2001 - July 29, 2001

Salvo. With a deafening roar fourteen thousand soldiers ran through the gates of Prague's Strahov Stadium, the biggest stadium in the world, covering an area larger than eight football pitches. They launched into a performance which drew gasps of admiration - and sometimes fright - from the crowd. The musical accompaniment built up to a crescendo as a huge five-cornered star formed from their bodies with the corners spreading from the stands on one side to those on the other. In the middle of the star a soldier climbed the pyramid of human bodies. He spread his arms wide, raised his eyes to the sky and from the Strahov Stadium, the "hymn of the working people" - the Internationale - sounded over Prague.

Performances such as these were typical of the Czechoslovak Spartakiads. They were some of the most spectacular mass gymnastic...

 
Chicago - New York
March 29, 2001 - April 30, 2001

This exhibition of more than 150 black-and-white photographs represent a cross section of the thousands of significant buildings that are protected by local landmark designation in Chicago and New York City. The story of how this came to pass is both as similar and as different as the cities themselves.

The preservation movement in both cities was, in large part, a response to demolition threats that occurred to significant structures during the building boom of the post-World War II years. For New Yorkers, the call to action as the 1963 demolition of Pennsylvania Station, a Beaux Arts masterpiece designed by McKim, Mead & White (1902-04). Two years later, New York City passed legislation that would help protect other significant structures from demolition or damaging alteration, establishing the New York City Landmarks...

 
East is Red - Posters, objects and photos from the period of the Chinese Cultural Revolution (1966-1976)
February 18, 2001 - March 24, 2001

An exhibition organised jointly by the Open Society Archives and the Centre for the Study of Democracy of the Westminster University.

From 19th February to 24th March Centrális Gallery (Nádor utca 11.) presented an extraordinary exhibition of pieces from the Chinese Poster Collection of the Westminster University, London.

At the time of their creation these materials were under stricter prohibition than in the decadent Western culture. While the names Antonioni, the Beatles or Sartre were tolerated in Budapest, Mao Zetong, Jiang Qing or Lin Biao were only pronounced with obligatory disapproval by those loyal to the regimes of Central and Eastern Europe. Yet, were it not for Mao, the still worshiped '68 would not have taken place and the Hungarian democratic opposition would never have emerged. For the silence around what...