Commissioned Memory

Following last year’s exhibition, Commissioned Memory: Hungarian Exhibitions in Auschwitz, 1960/1965, its virtual version is released on the occasion of the Memorial Day of the Hungarian Victims of the Holocaust.

The project introduces completely forgotten yet exceptional works of art exhibited at the first Hungarian exhibition in Auschwitz in 1960 as well as a monumental fine arts collection commissioned for the 1965 permanent exhibition at the same venue. With the addition of the earliest Hungarian artworks dealing with the Roma Holocaust, the virtual exhibition highlights the absence of the issue from the 1960s shows.

The 1960 and 1965 exhibitions in Auschwitz were among the earliest projects of official memory politics; both represented Hungary within an international context abroad while externalizing the memory of the Holocaust. The project proves that although the presented works, commissioned for Auschwitz, were originally conceived as illustrations of anti-fascist memory politics, the works, as well as their critical reception contributed substantially to the emergence and formation of the memory of the Holocaust in Hungary.

Earlier, in 2004, Blinken OSA Archivum already reconstructed the historical parts of the Hungarian exhibitions in Auschwitz. The reconstruction of the online version of the 2004 exhibition is also available (in Hungarian).

The online version of the exhibition held at the Galeria Centralis is available at the following link.