It seemed obvious that establishing a foundation would be essential to the task of properly managing Imre Makovecz’s heritage.
After lengthy preparations and overcoming the well-known absurdities of bureaucracy, finally the Metropolitan Court of Budapest registered the Foundation in January 2012. (Indicative of the nonsensical bureaucracy we are forced to endure these days was the Court’s request for family members to obtain approval from themselves to use their own family name … after some deliberation we granted the approval…)
We owe many thanks to all “fellow organizations” that helped us with tender and grant applications that we were not yet authorized to deal with during the establishment process – thank you therefore to Doparum, Makona and Triskell. With their kind help, we could slowly begin the digitization of the collection, organize the press conference to announce the Foundation’s launch, and the private exhibition to which we mostly invited would-be donors. The event was reported in the press, and many of the invitees subsequently sent donations so we could begin to approach self-sufficiency. At the press conference, we also signed agreements with the Hungarian Academy of Arts and the Károly Kós Association.
Our first task is the digital processing of the collection, an endeavour that is in its first year and one that is expected to take several more years to complete. In order to ensure proper cataloguing of processed items, we talked with and obtained information from several forums (National Archives, National Széchenyi Library, etc.). Based on what we learned we chose to go our own way and ordered a proprietary, customized document inventory and sorting programme developed especially for our needs. Hopefully everything (software, technological background, storage equipment) will be in place soon so that we can process the collection systematically and efficiently.
Parallel to this we passed a resolution on upgrading the Makovecz website. While only traces of this are visible still, a completely renewed website will soon be launched. Its contents are now being prepared, as we do not want to inaugurate the new site with incomplete information.
In addition, we passed decisions on countless minor matters, supporting or helping certain initiatives (e.g. we supported participation in the Royal Academy of Architecture’s “Wonderful and astonishing” exhibition but rejected other invitations that I shall not list here.)
In September 2012, we announced that the Foundation would establish the “Imre Makovecz Prize”, details of which will be disclosed to the public in the near future. One partner that contacted us was the House of Education in Sárospatak, an institution that will soon celebrate the 30th anniversary of its inauguration. We support them with a brand new exhibition package titled “Makovecz and Sárospatak”. Also, after seeing the deterioration of the building, we contacted the mayor of Sárospatak requesting that the façade be renovated. The project would comprise facade decoration and the renewal of the glass “eyebrows”. As the city had no funds for this, the Foundation will finance the replacement of the glass items.
Finally I would mention our intention to initiate the construction of Makovecz buildings that to date exist only on paper. We have taken several steps toward this end, not without some success, but I cannot disclose more about this as we are in a very early phase.
PM
