The museum of the 21st century

Museums are the guardians and transmitters of culture and knowledge. In the 21st century, however, with the development of technology and the changing needs of the public, museums also had to be renewed. Exhibition methods have also changed a lot in recent decades.

Traditional museums were static, with exhibits simply lined up next to each other, with little information provided. Today’s modern museums are interactive and multimedia, visitors can actively participate in the exhibition and discover the stories behind the objects.

The Kiscelli Museum is located in Óbuda, in the III district of Budapest. The museum is housed in a beautiful baroque building complex, which was originally a Trinitarian monastery built between 1745 and 1760 by Viennese architect Johann Entzenhoffer. The Trinitarians were a Catholic religious order dedicated to the redemption of prisoners. The monastery also included a church, which is still part of the museum today.

The Kiscelli Museum was founded in 1935. The founder of the museum was Dr. Zsigmond Czakó, an archaeologist and art historian, who created an archaeological collection in the monastery building. The museum’s collection has been constantly expanding ever since, and today it numbers more than 100,000 artifacts.

The Kiscelli Museum belongs to the Budapest Historical Museum, and its collection is diverse and rich. The museum houses archaeological finds, examples of applied arts, paintings, sculptures and other works of art. Part of the museum’s collection is related to the history of the capital, but the museum also collects artifacts from other areas.

The modern museum itself comes to life, telling a new story about the objects of past eras and reviving their environment.

At the Kiscelli Museum, we can become not only visitors but also active participants in the programs, and gain various knowledge in a playful way.

One such program is Balázs Maczó’s curatorial tour in the exhibition Honeyed Life – The story of the Beliczay gingerbread and wax candle making workshop.

The exhibition presents an extremely rich material from the family’s personal documents, which were borrowed from the descendants. The aim of the exhibition is to highlight the mission of the Beliczays: the love of bees and honey is an indispensable necessity of our lives. To ensure that visitors can experience this as well, they can not only try using the striking boards, but anyone can also take the once secret Beliczay recipe with them.

After the tour, we will decorate ornate gingerbread hearts with gingerbread maker Mirtill Seregély using traditional techniques. As a result of the decorating method, in addition to the single-color gingerbreads with striking sticks, more and more colorful and ornate gingerbreads appeared in the markets and fairs, gradually replacing them.

A new experience is offered by the site-specific museum-theatrical adaptation of the world-famous Nick Hornby novella.

The hero of our comedy has no idea about art. But as a former bouncer, he is hired in a contemporary gallery to guard a controversial work of art. The picture is 3 meters high and 1.60 meters wide, and was made with a rather special technique. Some people don’t like it and it can be interpreted in many ways. However, opinions about art – and about this particular picture – are slowly changing. The comedy itself takes place in an exhibition space, and the performance is preceded by a tour of the TEMPORARY EXHIBITION on multiple tracks, during which workshop secrets, historical riddles and artifacts forgotten for decades are brought to light.

The Kiscelli Museum is an interesting experiment in transforming museum experiences.