The new museum will be housed in the immediate vicinity of the City Park, in the historic Klösz Villa. Previously used as an office building, the villa, of over 3,000-square metres, - where György Klösz, a pioneer of Hungarian urban photography, once worked – will become home to Hungary’s central photography collection after its full-scale renovation.
Ferenc Veress, a pioneer of Hungarian photography, advocated the establishment of a permanent national photography museum at the end of the 19th century, This dream is about to be fulfilled: the National Museum of Photography will soon open to showcase the rich past and present of Hungarian photographic art in a deserving fashion. With over 700,000 photographic artefacts, the institution will house Hungary’s largest collection dedicated exclusively to photography. Visitors will be introduced to the key figures and movements of Hungarian photographic history from its 19th-century pioneers to the interwar avant-garde and contemporary artists. Special emphasis will be placed on the works of world-renowned photographers of Hungarian origin, such as André Kertész, László Moholy-Nagy, Brassaï, Robert Capa and Martin Munkácsi
The museum will welcome the public with more than 1,000 square metres of exhibition space, a reference library, as well as lecture halls and activity rooms. The collection’s professional background and the preservation of its artefacts will be granted by the world-class National Museum Conservation and Storage Centre. As a member institution of the Museum of Fine Arts, the new institution will operate as a national public collection alongside such prestigious museums as the Hungarian National Gallery, the Ferenc Hopp Museum of Asiatic Arts and the Vasarely Museum. Belonging to the renewed cultural quarter of the City Park, the National Museum of Photography will finally provide Hungarian photographic art with the place it has deserved for over a century, not only in Budapest but also on the global cultural map.