Museum of Applied Arts, Budapest, 8 December 2016 – 11 June 2017

Curators: Éva Horányi, Tamás Dévényi, Pál Ritoók
Installation: Tamás Dévényi

Thanks to the financial support of the Magyar Nemzeti Bank the conference table from the former furnishings of the New York office of the world-famous architect and furniture designer of Hungarian origin, Marcell Breuer, arrived at the Budapest Museum of Applied Arts in autumn 2016. Although Breuer is considered to belong to the most outstanding figures of design history, only few of his works are owned by Hungarian public collections. That is why it is of special importance that facing its reconstruction, the Budapest Museum of Applied Arts intends to make the public acquainted with this new acquisition and its designer with this large-scale exhibition and a series of accompanying events.

Several interesting circumstances related to the conference table and to pieces of the famous tubular furniture, inspired by the designer’s first bicycle, have been revealed and can now be learned of by the public. In addition, the exhibition shows office furnishings of seven contemporaneous architects and designers who Breuer might have had connections to as an architect or alert participant in the life of the community of Hungarian architects. The pieces of furniture by Farkas Molnár, József Fischer, Lajos Kozma, Virgil Bierbauer, Gyula Kaesz, Zsuzsa Kovács, and László Wágner and archival documents of their career all prove Breuer’s influence on modern Hungarian interior and furniture design.

Photos of office interiors, plans and maquettes help the public to get an inside view of the process of planning, the everyday life of designers and – last but not least – of the milieu of architects. The exhibition is competed by expert and subjective guided tours, round-table discussions, workshops and interesting museum educational programs.