Iparkodunk

The closed yet living museum: how does the Museum of Applied Arts in Budapest survive the closure of its main building? This special publication testifies to the fact that although Ödön Lechner’s art nouveau palace on Üllői út was closed in 2017 due to resconstruction, the museum that was moved out of it is alive and trying to be well. In the 160-page bookazine titled Iparkodunk (“Craftivity”), reports, interviews and colourful stories tell the reader how the closed museum is kept on the surface and how the “Iparművészeti” can still be the art nouveau world heritage center in the future after the renovation.

From the outside the book is simple, gray, slightly industrial. At first glance it looks mournful with its black edge painting. Inside, however, it is vivid full of big pictures and red thread. This symbolizes that the institute, which is in a undeserving and nowadays ungrateful situation, hides a wonderful and unparalleled collection of applied arts.

On the gray cover and in the colourful inner title page a detail of Walter Crane’s “The Peacock Garden” wallpaper can be seen – it decorates one of the walls of the Budapest Museum of Applied Arts, in the directorate’s wing of the ground-floor corridor.