The Central European Research Institute for Art History (KEMKI) was established in 2021 as an affiliate of the Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest. Our mission is to strengthen Hungary's academic discourse and represent Hungarian art and art history at a high standard globally by initiating and implementing locally focused, regional and international research projects and collaborations connected to art-historical issues.
Crisis or bloom? Debates on Art in the 1980s no. 2
The 1980s as Gesamtkunstwerk
PRINT NETWORKS: Edgardo Antonio Vigo and Artists’ Periodicals
Artpool's new collection display
Call for Papers
Infrastructures of Selling Modern and Contemporary Art in Socialism and Postsocialism
New Acquisition of the SZM-KEMKI ADK
Donation by Dóra Maurer and the SUMUS Foundation
Eszter Őze: Museum of Working Bodies-Social Museum (1901-1945): Body and Work, Care and Discipline
We are excited to announce the publication by the Napvilág Kiadó of the volume by Eszter Őze, staff member of the Research Department at KEMKI and project leader of "Organising the Spectacle: Research on the Avant-garde".
Petrovics 150 : Study Volume in Honor of Elek Petrovics
The latest volume of KEMKI publications has been released, featuring studies on the life and professional career of Elek Petrovics (1873–1945), the legendary director of the Museum of Fine Arts.
Job Advertisement
Digitalization Assistant
Art Preserved in a Mirror Image
Conference on the Legacy of István Ferenczy
KEMKI's Participation in the Látkép Conference
The Látkép Art History Festival, organized by the HUN-REN Research Centre for the Humanities, will take place between September 25 and 27, 2025. KEMKI will be represented at the academic conference by the Archive and Documentation Centre and the Research Department.
Fanzine Anatomy finissage
concert and video interview marathon
The Future Continues
Artpool Art Research Center's traditional summer exhibition event at the Valley of Arts Festival in Kapolcs
Zine-making workshop with Zabella
As part of the Fanzine Anatomy collection dislplay, Artpool is organizing a free of charge zine-making workshop with the creators of Zabella Zine.
Curatorial Guided Tour on the Fanzine Anatomy
The next event of „Fanzine Anatomy – Alternative Hungarian Publications on Music and Politics from the Artpool Collection” will take place on July 2nd at 5 pm.
Curatorial Guided Tour on the Fanzine Anatomy
Alternative Hungarian Publications on Music and Politics from the Artpool Collection
Who Will Be the Keeper? – Keeping Track of Art
What is the current state of independent art archives, databases and registers in Hungary and internationally? To what extent are they visible? Who uses them and for what purpose? Can art archives even be separated from other historical source bases in the first place, and if so, why should they be considered separately?
What Can the Perspective of Borderlands Internationalism Offer Art Historians?
A lecture by Joseph Grim Feinberg (Czech Academy of Sciences; Senior Core Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies, CEU) within the framework of KEMKI’s research project on the art of the 1980s.
Exhibitions and Criticism. Artistic Discourses in the 1980s
Book Launch in Pécs
TÓTalJOY Prize
Open call
Seeing the Whole Picture: Studies on the Work of György Konecsni
We are pleased to announce the release of a new publication of KEMKI. This richly illustrated volume of essays—published in connection to KEMKI ADK’s research on cold war modernisms, and edited by Katalin Bakos and Eszter Szőnyeg-Szegvári—explores the oeuvre of György Konecsni from new perspectives. At the book launch event, Tünde Topor will moderate a conversation between Katalin Bakos, Sára Bárdi, Anikó Katona and Eszter Szőnyeg-Szegvári.
Exhibitions and Criticism
Book launch
Weather Manipulation, Climate Monsters and Ecocriticism
Guided Tour by Annamária Hódosy and Rita Süveges
Archives of the Futures
Digital selection from the Poetry Bureau (Andrzej Partum) and Artpool collections.
Central and Eastern European Artists in Interwar Metropolises
International Conference
Weather Spectre: From Magic to Geoengineering
The exhibition presents the research-based art project of Rita Süveges, winner of the 2023 TÓTalJOY Prize.
JEPS Special Issue on the Center-Periphery Dynamics of The Press
A special issue has been published on the 2022 conference of the European Society for Periodical Research (ESPRit), which took place in Budapest.
Summer Break
The research service of the Archives and Documentation Centre is closed from 1 til 31 August.
The first part of ArtMargins’ Resonances Special Issue is Out!
A thematic selection of papers from our regional collaborative research project, Resonances, which concluded in 2023, has been published in the online edition of ArtMargins.
World-Famous World-Archives – László Beke 80
Presentation and discussion
Crisis or bloom? Debates on Art in the 1980s
Institutional system under the radar: with Gábor Andrási, Tamás Török and Tibor Várnagy
Equal and Unequal
Lecture on Josef and Anni Albers by Nicholas Fox Weber, cultural historian, Bauhaus scholar and Executive Director of The Josef and Anni Albers Foundation
New Acquisition of the Photographic Collection of the SZM-KEMKI ADK
Donation of Photographer György TÓTH
CFP: Infrastructures of Trading and Transferring Art since 1900
Workshop - Call for Papers
Petrovics 150
To celebrate the 150th anniversary of the birth of Elek Petrovics (1873-1945), who was an art critic, art collector and the director of the Museum of Fine Arts between 1914 and 1935, the KEMKI-ADK is organising a professional conference.
Malevich and Interwar Modernism
Conversation with art historian Éva Forgács
Hajnal Németh: FREEDOM TRAP - Performative Installation
Open daily: 12:00 – 20:00
Simultaneous concert daily from 18:00
Commissioned Memory - Hungarian Exhibitions in Auschwitz, 1960/1965
Contrary to popular belief, the Holocaust was not a taboo in the fine arts of early Socialist Hungary. In addition to numerous non-commissioned works of art, the subject also emerged within official memory politics.
Summer Break
The research service of the Archives and Documentation Centre is closed from 1 til 31 August.
CFP: Representations of the Holocaust in the Cold War Eastern Bloc: the Early Decades
The conference examines the memory of the Holocaust in fine arts within the Eastern Bloc from 1945 until the end of the 1960s.
CFP: What Is to Be Done?
Methodological Challenges to Art Historical Research in Central and Eastern Europe
50 Years of Rememberance / Basic Differences
Exhibition
Document Analysis / Object Shaping
Site-specific contemporary artworks at KEMKI
TÓTalJOY Prize
Call for proposal
The Exhibition as Medium in the Bloc
Resonances III. conference
Stratification of an Archive
Possible Approaches to the Oeuvre of Péter Korniss
Linking Art Worlds: American Art and Eastern Europe in the Cold War to the Present
The Budapest Chapter of the Linking Art Worlds travelling seminar in KEMKI
FUTURE BEGINNINGS / COINCIDENCES | 50 - 40 - 30 - 20 - 10 YEARS AGO | NOW
Artpool’s alternative presence in Kapolcs
The Contradictions of 1980s Alternative Art
Lecture of Katja Praznik, Slovenian cultural researcher
Pathos and/or Criticism? The Political and Artistic Instrumentalisation of the Female Body
KEMKI Open Lectures III.
Art of the Holocaust Until 1989: Beyond an East/West Divide
Conference organized by KEMKI Research Department and Central European University (CEU) Jewish Studies Program
The Flowers of Decay – The Art of Hungary in the 1980s
Conference about the art of Hungary in the 1980s, organized by KEMKI Research Department
“Every Psychologist Should Tend to with Their Own State of Mind”
KEMKI Open Lectures II.
Language Games
Selection from the Artpool collection
Beyond Friendships: Regional Cultural Transfer in the Art of the ‘70s
Resonances II. konferencia
Jewish Community and Medicine
KEMKI Open Lectures I.
Rippl-Rónai, Egry, Csontváry
Workshop-conference on the planned primary source publications of the KEMKI ADK
Parallel Structures, Communicating Channels and Nodes
Resonances I. conference
What Will Be Already Exists: Temporalities of Cold War Archives in East-Central Europe and Beyond
Online book launch of KEMKI Artpool Art Research Center
What Would if…Documenta?
Talk series "Hungarian artists at the documenta from Vasarely to OFF-Biennale"
Linking Art Worlds
Traveling research seminars 2022—2024 - call for application
Periodicals beyond Hierarchies
Challenging Geopolitical and Social “Centres” and “Peripheries” through the Press – Call for Papers 10th International ESPRit Conference
TÓTalJOY 2021 Award Ceremony / Tamás Kaszás
Endre Tót and the Museum of Fine Arts – Central European Research Institute for Art History (KEMKI) announced a call for research-based art projects for the first time in July this year, to which 27 project proposals were submitted.
TÓTalJOY Prize 2021 – Call to Artists
Endre Tót and the Museum of Fine Arts – Central European Research Institute for Art History (KEMKI) announce an open call to contemporary artists for the submission of research-based art projects proposals.
Artpool40 – Active Archives and Art Networks
International Conference of the Artpool Art Research Center