The building of the National Centre for Museum Restoration and Storage (OMRRK) completed as part of the Liget Budapest Project was inaugurated in the presence of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán. At the ceremony, a painting by Renoir entitled Reclining Nude – which the Hungarian State recently purchased for the Museum of Fine Arts – was also presented.

A facility, the likes of which had never existed before, has come into being, László Baán, ministerial commissioner of the Liget Budapest Project and Director General of the Museum of Fine Arts – Hungarian National Gallery said at the inauguration of the centre.

He added that a modern storage facility had been created for tens of thousands of objects of art of three museums, which is in the world’s vanguard both regarding its scale and its quality.

Mr Baán thanked the government and the Prime Minister for having undertaken to complete the Liget Budapest Project in a quality which “only the greatest nations of culture are capable of,” and also spoke in words of praise about the Narmer Architectural Studio led by Zsolt Vasáros because “they dreamt up an elegant and graceful building thoroughly considered in every one of its facets”.

The installation of museum technology and the removal to the new location of the objects of art could now begin. The project worth HUF 20 billion will solve the problems of collection and storage experienced in the past for many decades to come, he added.

By Mr Baán’s account, the audience of the Museum of Fine Arts will have a chance to view Auguste Renoir’s masterpiece purchased for USD 12.3 million (HUF 3.5 billion) at a chamber exhibition from 24 May.

Introducing the central building of the facility with a ground space of more than 30,000 square metres, Sára Schilling, Director for Museum Affairs of the investor Városliget Zrt. said the complex will cater for the preservation and scientific processing of more than 300,000 objects of art for the Museum of Ethnography, the Museum of Fine Arts and the Hungarian National Gallery.

The central building of OMRRK implemented as part of a brown-field project on the premises of the Szabolcs utca hospital complex, which was closed down earlier, will serve as museum storage space of the highest quality on four floors below ground level, while the three levels above ground will accommodate restoration workshops and laboratories. The workshops, studios and laboratories will provide a scientific and technical background to the highest world standards for the museum specialists working at OMRRK.

Benedek Gyorgyevics, Chief Executive of Városliget Zrt. told the Hungarian news agency MTI that the building complex with a ground space of 37,000 square metres will also accommodate the Research Institute for Central European Art History (KEMKI). In the home of KEMKI of more than 3,000 square metres, a library and document archive will also assist researchers. These will be based on the documents gathered by the Museum of Fine Arts and the Hungarian National Gallery for over a century, and will be supplemented with the archive documents of the Artpool Art Research Centre and the former Fine and Applied Arts Readers’ Department. As a result, some one and a half million documents will be available to researchers.

On the premises of OMRRK a new park with a ground space of 13,000 square metres has also been created which will be open to visitors during the opening hours, in addition to a visitors’ centre, an exhibition space and a restaurant. The project implemented as a classical brown-field development will, as a result, also significantly contribute to the development of its immediate environment, Mr Gyorgyevics stressed.

A video film of the construction works can be viewed at https://youtu.be/XCfpBD4Sr60.