Ferenc Hopp Museum of Asiatic Arts

The Ferenc Hopp Museum of Asian Arts is located in Budapest at 103 Andrássy Avenue. It is a specialist museum of the Museum of Fine Arts, whose collection includes artistic relics of the Far East.

History

The collection was based on Ferenc Hopp's private collection, which counted about 4,000 items. This, like his palace on Andrássy Avenue, was donated to the Hungarian state in 1919, shortly before his death. The museum opened in 1923. The holdings were supplemented from several existing museum collections, so objects entered the museum from the Museum of Applied Arts, the Museum of Fine Arts, the Museum of Ethnography and the Hungarian National Museum. Further private collections (e.g., Wartha Vince) as well as Vietnamese, Chinese and North Korean state gifts after 1945 also expanded its holdings.

In 2006, about 23,000 works of art were on display, especially significant are the relics of medieval Japanese art and Chinese bronze and porcelain objects. The entire museum collection encompasses Chinese, Japanese, Indian, Southeast Asian, Nepali, Tibetan, Mongolian, Korean and Near Eastern material. The permanent exhibition of the specialist museum has been at the Ráth György Villa since 1955, while the Ferenc Hopp Museum regularly organizes temporary exhibitions. The latter present, thematically selected, the life, customs and culture of an individual Eastern country or people with labels, photographs and well‑curated objects.