Past exhibitions

Just a hundred years ago, in 1919, Walter Gropius founded the Weimar Bauhaus, the most important source and milestone of contemporary art, an art workshop and school. Its theory and practice inspired a number of subsequent art movements and approaches, and its original program offered even more: the aesthetic reform of life from everyday life to art. This selection is a kind of attempt to look back: rethink and recall this unique modernist utopia from a contemporary perspective.

Ludwig Museum is celebrating the 30th anniversary of its foundation in 2019. On the occasion of the anniversary, there will be an extraordinary series of exhibitions and programs presenting the history, present and future of the museum. 

The group exhibition IPARTERV 50+ presents a selection from the latest (or, in case of concluded oeuvres, the last) works of the artists who were represented at the Iparterv exhibitions of 1968 and 1969. Additionally, the exhibition features works by contemporary artists reflecting on specific works by Iparterv-artists or the Hungarian neo-avant-garde in general.

Salla Tykkä began her career in the mid-1990s. Her short films have been shown not only at international exhibitions but also in film festival competitions. For her work Giant, also on display at the Ludwig Museum, she received the Canon Tiger Award at the International Film Festival Rotterdam in 2014.

Both Hungarian and Estonian languages are of Finno-Ugric origin, but the two groups of people that have spread far from each other over the millennia have followed different historical paths. Where do the Northern, Baltic traditions and Central Eastern European history and the common post-socialist experience meet in the 21st century?

The exhibition presents Sam Havadtoy's New York years, when his art was largely impacted by his working relationships with the outstanding artists of the city in the 1970's and 1980's.

Erwin Wurm's works do not follow the traditional expectations of the genre, what's more, the artist attempts to fundamentally rethink sculpture.

The architectural installation of the exhibition Liberty Bridge – New Horizons in the City presents the Hungarian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale in an unprecedented way, in the atrium of which a lookout tower was built on the occasion of this year's Biennial. In the spirit of "free space", the central theme of the Biennial, the exhibition presents an exceptional episode in urban history that puts fundamental urban development issues into a new perspective.

Péter Türk created outstanding works of international quality at every stage of his consistent and coherent oeuvre characterized by a conceptual orientation.

The first major presentation of the Ukrainian contemporary art scene in Hungary is a special occasion to look into the vibrant art of a country full of tensions, which is still largely in the blind spot of the European cultural area.

The exhibition presents recent works by Rafael Yossef Herman known for capturing the hidden existence of the night’s darkness.

The exhibition presents to the public the results of a four-year international program (CAPP) the mission of which has been to acquaint artists with collaborative art practices and support participatory projects involving various communities with a focus on seeking effective solutions to pressing social issues.

If you did not have a chance to visit the Hungarian Pavilion at the 57th Venice Bienniale this year, do not worry, the exhibition is on view until 14 January 2018 at Ludwig Museum Budapest.

The newly set collection display makes attempts to present emphatic points not only in well-organised chronological order or along stylistic features, but to examine the characteristics, consonances, differences as well as the artistic-cultural parallels between Western and Eastern art.