Archive and Documentation Center (ADK)

The Archive and Documentation Center (ADK) is the department of the Central European Research Institute for Art History (KEMKI), with the most extended history and nearly 3,4 million unique documents of art-historical value. The predecessor of the ADK, the Hungarian Art Archive, was established by Elek Petrovics in 1920 based on the documents previously possessed by the library and the archives of the Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest. The collection consisted of documents – connected to the most influential Hungarian and European artists – that are not artworks in the strict sense, but rather manuscripts, photographs, inventories, lists of artworks, artist's catalogues and relics.

The earliest material includes documents and relics from the estates of Miklós Izsó, Károly Markó, Mihály Munkácsy, István Ferenczy and Károly Ferenczy. After the establishment of the Hungarian National Gallery in 1957, this collection became the basis of the institution's Archive. Other bequests were later added to the Archive during this period, including documents from Sándor Bortnyik, Tivadar Csontváry Kosztka, Gyula Derkovits, Lajos Tihanyi, János Tornyai, István Farkas and Lili Ország. The ADK looks after the complete Archive of the Lectorate for Fine- and Applied Arts, which operated between 1963 and 2013, and contains the documentation concerning industrial design projects, public art pieces and exhibitions from the second half of the 20th century, providing thus an unparalleled insight into the state-supported art of the era.

Today, the photo archive of the ADK holds nearly 230,000 photographs realised with a wide range of techniques, many of which were created in order to document the various artworks from the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts and the Hungarian National Gallery. The large number of reproductions is complemented with the archives of famous photographers. The most significant of these is the Péter Korniss Archive, which was donated to the ADK in 2020 as a gift from the artist. The negatives, contact copies and press clippings of the archive cover the entire oeuvre of the Kossuth Prize-winning photographer.