THE SKANSEN MUSEUM OF COMMUNIST MONUMENT SCULPTURE IN BUDAPEST

• Authors: Markowski, Marcin

Abstracts

EN

Memento Park, an extraordinary museum of the past epoch, is situated on the peripheries of Budapest. The Museum, created soon after the fall of communism in Hungary, features monumental sculptures executed in different periods of communist rule. For years, they were displayed in the Hungarian capital. The Park is not large, and wide gravel avenues lead the visitor to successive exhibits. Statues inside the Museum are arranged on the outer sides of circular avenues. Four sites feature specially built clinker brick walls displayingz commemorative tablets. The majority of the sculptures collected in the Park have been placed on pedestals specially adapted for the needs of the exposition. The largest exhibits include a fragment of a monument executed in 1969 to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the establishment of the Hungarian Soviet Republic. Exhibits on show at Memento Park also portray Hungarian communists. Inside the complex we come across monuments commemorating Georgi Dymitrov, Hungarian-Soviet friendship and Soviet war heroes. The Budapest Park is a Skansen museum since the exhibits are presented in open-air conditions. The second argument is the fact that the gathered monuments date back to a period that ended at the turn of 1989, while the task of a typical Skansen museum involves depicting a world that is becoming part of the past. Despite the fact that the Museum is not a reconstruction of a town planning configuration or architecture, by amassing communist monuments it salvaged them from destruction. In this manner exhibits in Memento Park constitute a local legacy depicting public art and themes accepted by the Hungarian authorities of the period.

Keywords

EN

Budapest; Memento Park; open-air museum; monuments; Skansen museum; Hungary

• Publisher: Krajowy Ośrodek Badań i Dokumentacji Zabytków
• Journal: Muzealnictwo
• Year: 2013
• Volume: 54
• Pages: 224-231

Contributors

author

Markowski, Marcin