BEKE 80 +1. Memorial Exhibition of Dr. László Beke, associated with BIENALSUR 2025

Opening: Wednesday November 26th, 6 p.m. Dr. László Beke, art historian and professor at the Hungarian University of Fine Arts, would have turned 80 on May 23, 2024. This anniversary coincides with another painful development: a symbolic sign of the times — the elimination of art history as a subject in Hungarian secondary schools — which has also sparked renewed questioning of the discipline’s relevance and criticism of the high school textbook Analysis of Works of Art (National Textbook Publishing House, 1986), authored by Beke. He was deeply engaged with every era, branch, and field of art history, and in every genre and technique of art. His far-reaching curiosity encompassed architecture, classical and fine arts, visual arts — including painting, sculpture, graphic art, and their intersections — as well as applied and decorative arts. He also had a strong affinity for literature (having earned his degree in both art history and Hungarian language and literature), poetry, music (he played the clarinet in his youth), theatre, dance, movement, photography, film, media, and interdisciplinary arts. As part of the actions of the BIENALSUR university network and within the framework of the collaboration between the Hungarian University of Fine Arts and UNTREF, a series of activations is being programmed around issues related to memory, archive, and collection. These activations are closely linked to the research processes at the core of these projects.