The Forms of Time – The temporary exhibition in our library has opened

 

The temporary exhibition, which will run for three months, began with a grand opening on 11 April 2024. Stepping out of the ordinary, The Forms of Time exhibition was a spectacular performance. The main protagonists were the curators of the exhibition, Klaudia Túri, Bernadett Varga and Márton Szovák, members of the Early Printed Book Collection. 

In his special speech, Dávid Rózsa stressed that "Every day, in every moment of our lives, we are concerned with time, which dominates our existence. It is a point of reference between two people. We dispose of it, we think that we can possess it, but in reality it is just a construct to which we set a clock and then forget about it. There are as many faces of time as there are personalities, but the face of every personality is drawn by time. The totality of our facial features is our history in time, the totality of our histories is our culture, made visible by the institutions of culture."

 

The words of Deputy State Secretary Máté Vincze were recorded in the exhibition space four days before the opening, when he stressed that "Libraries, museums and public collections are the best places to overcome the limitations of time, because they bring together the wisdom of our ancestors and their predictions for the future. We would not be able to master time without the knowledge, the conviction, the experience that libraries hold."

The exhibition was opened by Pál Lackner, Director of the Lutheran Central Collection, who in his greeting shared his thoughts on the history of the interpretation of time, its different nature from country to country and religion to religion, and also spoke about the rhythm of ecclesiastical and secular time, and the representation of time. 

The guests could listen to poems interpreted by actor Áron Őze, and the quintet of the Anima Musicae Chamber Orchestra, organised by the Haydneum – Hungarian Early Music Centre Foundation, played the Spring movement of Vivaldi's Violin Concerto The Four Seasons. The two figures of antiquity, Chronos and Kairos, also appeared before us; Máté Török, the exhibition's graphic designer, and Gergely Bokodi-Oláh, head of the Special Collections Division, gave their voices to the two deities.