Time: 18 May – October 2013
Location: The King St. Stephen Museum, in collaboration with the City Gallery Deak Collection in Szekesfehervar, Hungary
Deadline for the digital images: 28 February 2013
Deadline for sending artwork: 31 March 2013
King St. Stephen Museum in Székesfehérvár, Hungary is a county museum with a range of rich collections (archaeology, ethnography, local history, modern and contemporary art). The city is about 60 kilometers from Budapest. The museum started to work in the field of artists’ books twenty-five years ago.
In 1987 we organized the First International Artists’ Book Exhibition. There were about 300 works presented and later donated to the museum by the artists, thus establishing the first and still the only artists’ book collection in Hungary owned by a museum. As the years went by, our collection increased and we entered into relations with artists, archives and centers (e.g. Franklin Furnace Archives, New York and Guy Bleus’s Administration Centre, Wellen).
The museum held an exhibition in 1992 “American Book Arts” and in the following year, the Society of Hungarian Artists’ Book Publishers was founded.
In 1994 the Second International Artists’ Book Exhibition was shown in our museum. It had some 160 participants who sent their works, totaling 350 artists’ books. In the same year bookworks by Robbin Ami Silverberg were exhibited.
That year a partnership program was established within the framework of the American Association of Museums. A Hungarian exhibition, “Made in Hungary: Contemporary Artists’ Books” was on view in Cortland, NY and traveled to the Visual Studies Workshop in Rochester, NY in Spring 1999.
In 1998, 1999 and 2000, book artists participated in the international artist colony in Mór, not far from our museum.
In 2000 the museum organized the Third International Artist’ Book Exhibition, with about 330 participants and more than 550 works exhibited, then in 2006 at the Fourth International Artist’ Book Exhibition we displayed about 500 books of 300 artists.
There is an ever-increasing artists’ book collection of circa 1500 pieces in our museum (works by both Hungarian and international artists), in large part due to the artists who have donated the books to the collection after the shows.
Pieces are on display in a permanent exhibition in the New Hungarian Gallery in our museum in Székesfehérvár.
More info: Kati Izinger, art historian, King St. Stephen Museum
Tel.: +36-22-315583; Fax: +36-22-311734; Mobile: +36-30-4994702, email: izingerkati@gmail.com
