The opening of the Ludwig Museum was a historically important event: thanks to the married couple Ludwig of Aachen, important works, even on an international level, arrived in Budapest, and so the presentation of contemporary art in the Museum became possible. Many believe that we were behind compared to other regions and cities of Europe and the other continents. Indeed, in Hungary there is not even one museum of modern art, even though collections of Hungarian and international modern art can be found in various Hungarian museums.

The task now would be to give a better understanding of the history and internal logic of an artistic process and to attract the public to the visual arts of its era. It's very difficult to put together the mosaic of Hungarian development and of universal history, but even more difficult to see it and conceive it as a whole. The Museum of Contemporary Art/ Budapest Ludwig Museum intends to present and study the relationships between Hungarian and international art; real, existing relationships, even if for decades the directors of Hungarian cultural life tried to ignore the undeniable interferences. Our job is to promote scientific studies in regards, in order to attract foreign interest in Hungarian art.

Regarding the Museum of Budapest, one may ask how valid is it to have as reference a collection that is wanted and run by private owners. Who are these collectionists, what are their interests in contemporary art? Husband and wife Peter and Irene Ludwig had not only the financial means, but also a great amount of culture and refined taste. They had both studied History of Art at the University of Mainz. Peter Ludwig wrote his degree thesis on the human image in the works of Picasso: a courageous choice in postwar Germany. The Ludwigs' Picasso collection, containing 800 original pieces, is unique in the world. It's a great satisfaction that three representative works of this collection are now found in Budapest.

In the fifties the Ludwigs began collecting antique and medieval works and pre-Columbian ceramics. It the sixties they turned to "classic" modern and contemporary art, predominantly to American pop art. Works of the pop art collection, the most important in the world, are in the Ludwig Museums of Koln, Aachen, Vienna and Budapest. Just as important are the Russian avan-garde collection and the section dedicated to the '80s. The works of this collection are the most important of our museum: Mr. and Mrs. Ludwig and Stiftung Ludwig of Aachen donated 70 works and lent 96 others; the global insurance value amounts to more than 40 million German marks.

Why Budapest? The answer comes from the "soft dictatorship" of the '80s. In that period, only Hungary was willing to receive a collection of that calibre and open a new museum With his collection, prof.Ludwig wanted to refind the unity of international art and rediscover the historical ties in culture despite political separation. In the Museum of Budapest, the following works of art are finally exhibited together: American art, Hungarian art of the '60s which looked towards international movements, the "heftige Malerei", the transavant-garde Italian art and the Hungarian "uj festE'szet" (new painting) of the '80s, plus works of the '90s.

The condition of the museum's building presents another considerable problem. Reconstruction of the palace of Budavar, that is, of the Royal Palace, began in the '60s and correspond to the taste and needs of those years, so therefore the interior is not very suitable for holding art exhibitions. The presence of a red marble covering is very "heavy". It does not correspond to the "white cube", to neutral spaces, considered to be ideal in the '60s, nor does it correspond to the spaces thought out in the '80s and '90s to underline the tension between historic environment and contemporary art. It seems that the best solution is to look for connections of space and to show correlations in art and putting "in quotes" the strength of "totalitarian" architecture". Dark spaces are also used, the "black box" and the "blue box", vital for videos and films in the contemporary visual arts.

According to us, the museum has to be "alive" and for this purpose we organize mainly international exhibitions, readings, conferences and projections. this winter we will present the works of Antoni Muntadas, a Catalan artist who lives in the United States, and of Gia Edzgveradze, a Georgian artist who had a great success at the Venice Biennial Exhibition in 1997. We invited the Nepolitan artist Ernesto Tatafiore for next year and we will continue video showings with a Dutch exhibition. These manifestations will be followed by a selection of English art and of the presentations of the gouache of Sigmar Polke. We hope to continue this list with an exhibition, next spring, of Italian contemporary art organized by "Trieste Contemporanea". To go along with the motto of the Spring festival of '99 ("Farewell to the Twentieth Century") we are preparing a dramatic and ironic "artistic farewell", with the participation of Hungarian artists.