Commissioned Memory

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Commissioned Memory: Hungarian Exhibitions in Auschwitz, 1960/1965

Virtual exhibition

curator and editor
Daniel Véri

graphic designer
Sarolta Ágnes Erdélyi

website
Károly Timári

photographs
Miklós Sulyok

artists
Tibor Barabás, Gyula Hincz, György Jovánovics, János Kass, Béla Kondor, György Konecsni, Gyula Konfár, István Martsa, József Péri, József Somogyi, Endre Szász, Simon Wiesenthal

Hungarian Exhibitions in Auschwitz, 1960/1965

Commissioned Memory: Hungarian Exhibitions in Auschwitz, 1960/1965 is a research-based project, consisting of an exhibition that took place at the Galeria Centralis of the Blinken OSA Archivum in Budapest in 2023, the virtual version of the exhibition accessible on this site, and a forthcoming book, published by CEU Press.

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, it highlights the absence of the issue from the 1960s shows.

The project demonstrates that although the presented works, commissioned for Auschwitz, were originally conceived as illustrations of antifascist 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.