Using a new perspective

One of the advantages of being a PhD student is that I get to learn about new contexts between “exhibition” and “display”. Just like my professor, who visited a classic car race and discovered a lot of interesting relationships between a car show and a museum.

Case in the point is my weekend stroll with my daughter. We are living at the shores of the Balaton Lake. So we fed ducks and took a walk in the nearby park. And that’s when we stumbled into the Europe Sculpture Park. I heard a few things about this, but I have never seen it up close. Until now. I was pleasantly surprised on one hand but I also had some doubts. You see, Balatonalmadi, my city, is a very conservative place – it prides itself on being the only city in Hungary which had a Trianon Memorial back when the Iron Curtain was erected. I don’t want to get political, so all I am saying is that you can find easily a lot of documents on the 1920 Treaty of Trianon which seriously reduced the size of Hungary. Anyhow, just a stone’s throw from the Trianon Memorial there are sculptures made by Hungarian, Bulgarian, Italian, French etc. artists. The initiative is great: uniting EU artists under a common theme. These are very modern sculptures, which are in stark contrasts to other monuments in Balatonalmadi. I am curious, how these artworks are perceived by the good citizens of my city. I will try to ask around. The other problem is the lack of labelling. I did not find any signposts describing the idea in great detail. And as a result of my training, I now have some ideas on how to develop the parc a bit further to make it interesting for other visitors. We’ll see, how these will be received.

Elsewhere, I have been comissioned by the Hungarian Postal Museum to upgrade some of their displays. I started collecting sources, photos etc. Eventually this draft document became a 5000-word essay with over 90 illustration. With that came the realisation that wow, this may be turned into a nice brochure.

In my last blog entry, I mentioned that I applied to a second museum as a volunteer. Negotations are ongoing, but there’s a promise that I can curate an exhibit in 2015 or 2016 on the history of motor car trading in Hungary.

In the meantime I keep reading. And the funny thing is that it works. I have to write three essays by next Summer. When the topics were outlined in April I was frightened. I am not frightened anymore. I am excited, eager and ready to write :)!