PRO URBE – Thirty Years for Budapest

This year’s Night of the Museums, coinciding with the 200th anniversary of Mór Jókai’s birth, sees the thirty-year-old Blinken OSA Archivum paying tribute to the famously philanthropic writer with a charity evening. Continuing its decades-long commitment to Budapest, the Archivum responds to the city’s increasingly precarious situation by organizing a special concert in collaboration with the Festival String Quartet. Proceeds from the event will support the From Street to Home Association (ULE), a civic organization dedicated to improving housing conditions in Budapest. During the concert, selected Budapest-related footage from the Private Photo and Film Archive will be screened. Visitors will also have the opportunity to explore other Budapest-focused collections throughout the evening. 

The event runs from 4:00 p.m. to 11:00 p.m., featuring guided tours of the Goldberger House—the industrial heritage building that now houses the Archivum. The building preserves unique archival materials, including the background files of the Radio Free Europe Research Institute, as well as collections on the Cold War and human rights. Guests can also join guided tours of our current exhibition, The Tactless Photojournalist – Lajos Erdélyi’s Archive from the Ceaușescu Era.  The curators—photographer Lenke Szilágyi and senior archivist Zsuzsa Zádori—will personally lead the tour. 

Budapest has remained central to the Archivum’s mission over the past three decades. Initiatives such as Budapest100, Fortepan, and Yellow Star Houses were all launched here, inviting citizens to engage with and explore the city’s history. Continuing this tradition, we are now introducing a new community-based digitization program that will also rely on contributions of Budapest’s residents. 

Beginning this month, on the first Wednesday afternoon of every month (from 2:00 p.m. and 5:00 p.m.), we welcome analog audiovisual materials made before 1989—VHS tapes, home movies, and other formats—preserved by residents of Budapest and beyond. With the donors’ consent, the Archivum will digitize these materials for long-term preservation and to build a new digital collection, while returning the originals to their owners. 
(For more information, please visit: archivum.org.) 

Night of the Museums Program 

4:00 p.m. – The Goldberger House: Guided Tour 
A unique opportunity to explore an industrial heritage building that houses an archive, exhibition space, and cultural center. Once a year, we open our underground storage areas to the public, offering a glimpse into where we preserve background materials from the Radio Free Europe Research Institute, along with other Cold War and human rights collections. 

5:00 p.m. – Guided Exhibition Tour: The Tactless Photojournalist – Lajos Erdélyi’s Archive from the Ceaușescu Era 
Our latest exhibition, which opened on June 19, 2025, at the Galeria Centralis of the Archivum, offers the first comprehensive presentation of Lajos Erdélyi’s lesser-known body of work. The Transylvanian photojournalist, documentarian, and savior of archives captured the raw realities of Ceaușescu-era Romania with a unique, independent vision—even while working on official assignments. The tour will be led by the exhibition’s curators: photographer Lenke Szilágyi and senior archivist Zsuzsa Zádori. 

6:30 p.m. – Saving Budapest’s Moving Image Memories 
To mark the launch of our new community digitization program, visitors are invited to take an exclusive behind-the-scenes tour of the Archivum’s audiovisual department. Learn about—and even handle—the cameras, projectors, and recording devices that captured 20th-century memories: 8mm film cameras, reel-to-reel tape recorders, slide projectors, U-matic and BetaSP video cassettes, and classic dictaphones. Discover the now-exotic equipment of our pre-digital world. 
Registration link: https://forms.office.com/e/GBmUBhR0aB 

7:00 p.m. – Budapest Investigations 
In the Archivum’s Research Room, visitors can explore additional Budapest-related collections. We will screen pre-1989 educational films from the Ministry of Interior and showcase the Budapest photo albums of Dr. István Bartók, a retired physician who passed away in 2007. In the early 2000s—well before the advent of Google Street View—Dr. Bartók compiled his own unique “urban anatomical atlas” of the city. 

8:00 p.m. – The Goldberger House: Guided Tour 

9:00 p.m. – Budapest on Home Film – Concert by the Festival String Quartet 
During the concert, we will screen curated footage of Budapest from the Private Photo and Film Archive, including materials from the Fischer family’s collection. 
Festival String Quartet: Tímea Iván, Alexei Stychkin, Barna Juhász, Péter Szabó 
Program: Antonín Dvořák: String Quartet in F Major “American” / Op. 96 
All donations collected during the concert will support the work of the From Street to Home Association (ULE), which is dedicated to tackling housing issues in Budapest. 

10:00 p.m. – The Goldberger House: Guided Tour