The Hungarian National Gallery is the country’s largest public collection tracing how Hungarian fine art took shape and evolved. Inside the castle walls, visitors find permanent and temporary exhibitions, tours in Hungarian and other languages, themed programs, family days, festivals, and concerts. Kids get their share too, with creative clubs, art education sessions, and summer camps keeping young hands busy and imaginations alight.
Toddlers in snow boots, detectives in the galleries
January 13 kicks off with Toddlers – Snowflake Dance, a winter mini-journey for the smallest museum-goers. Think soft gloves, warm snow boots, and a magical stroll through a snow-clad forest—plus singing, storytelling, and dancing with the snowflakes. It’s a gentle, sensory-friendly way to explore color in a whitewashed landscape. Budapest.
January 14 ushers in Recolor It! – Museum Workshop for Kids, a hands-on club wrapped in a mystery. The galleries are full of clues, and young detectives are tasked with unmasking the secrets of pioneering modernist Lajos Tihanyi. They’ll pore over dozens of his works, hunt for hidden details, and piece together the puzzle. The sleuthing becomes making: kids “forge” paintings, build a composite sketch, and play with photo manipulation to test how images can be altered. Budapest.
Hearing silence, painting voice: Tihanyi’s legacy
On January 15, Mama, Look! – The Silence Speaks steps into Tihanyi’s world. One of the most original figures of Hungarian avant‑garde art, he lost his hearing and speech in childhood. The session traces how a perceived disadvantage turned into a defining strength, helping him forge a singular visual voice. Budapest.
That same day brings Tihanyi 140: Curator Mariann Gergely’s tour. Born 140 years ago, Tihanyi was long known at home mainly from black-and-white reproductions—until his estate made a dramatic, circuitous journey from Paris to the Hungarian National Gallery 55 years ago. This tour re-colors his reception for local audiences. Budapest.
Italian tour, bold forms
January 16 offers Visita guidata in italiano, a crash course in Hungarian art history in Italian. Expect a sweep from the Middle Ages to now, with a special focus on the 19th and 20th centuries—plus a playful promise that you might even bump into Dante in the galleries. Also on the 16th, art historian Gergely Barki leads The Person Behind the Palette, a fresh, unconventional walkthrough of Tihanyi 140. Budapest.
On January 17, Rebel Forms, Bold Colors – The Art of Lajos Tihanyi marks his 140th birthday with a major career show of key paintings, graphics, and personal belongings. Losing his hearing as a child, Tihanyi fashioned color and form out of silence and found a unique “voice” in the language of painting. Without academic training, he built a striking visual idiom, becoming a leading figure of The Eight (A Nyolcak) artists’ group and one of the most original painters in 20th‑century Hungarian art. Join a guided tour for a deeper dive. Also on the 17th, Create! – Abstract Experience Painting celebrates abstraction’s freedom—from geometric patterns to freewheeling brushwork—spotlighting Sean Scully, Judit Reigl, and Simon Hantaï before participants paint their own bold abstractions. Writer and art historian Rita Halász caps the day with Embroidered in Concrete, a subjective, writerly tour. Budapest.
Nudes at the turn of the century
January 18 repeats Rebel Forms, Bold Colors with the same sweeping overview. Also that day: Nude Sculptures from the Turn of the Century. The nude is among art’s oldest themes, constantly morphing with the ideals of its era. This guided tour showcases the renewed 19th–20th-century nude sculpture display and how artists reimagined the human body. Budapest.
Style shifts, online tours, and more Tihanyi
January 21 returns to Recolor It! for more detective work with Tihanyi’s oeuvre—more hidden details, more playful forgery, more image tinkering. The same day, Mental Fitness – New Year, New Style zooms in on artists who reinvented themselves. Think János Vaszary, József Rippl‑Rónai, and Aurél Bernáth—painters whose contrasting periods could fool you into thinking different hands made them. After the gallery walk, the workshop channels one of Rippl‑Rónai’s styles. Budapest.
On January 22, the Tihanyi show goes digital with an online guided tour for Hungarian Culture Day, bringing his story to living rooms everywhere. Budapest.
January 23’s Rebel Forms, Bold Colors returns with a guided tour for those who missed earlier dates. Budapest.
Kids’ tours, double takes, and sign language access
January 24 is Adventure in the Gallery – Strange Faces, a two-part guided tour series: 10:30–11:15 for ages 6–9, then 11:30–12:15 for ages 10–13. Later, Gergely Barki presents a lecture, Two or None: Doublings and Gaps in Lajos Tihanyi’s Oeuvre, tracking repetitions, discontinuities, and the riddles of a life’s work. Budapest.
On January 25, Rebel Forms, Bold Colors returns with a sign-language-interpreted guided tour, widening access while foregrounding Tihanyi’s own experience creating out of silence. Budapest.
End-of-month encore
January 27 brings another Toddlers – Snowflake Dance. January 28 spins up another Recolor It! session for junior sleuths. January 29 revisits Mama, Look! – The Silence Speaks, followed by another guided Rebel Forms, Bold Colors tour. Budapest.
January 31 closes the month with one more Rebel Forms, Bold Colors guided tour, a final chance in January to meet Tihanyi’s color-charged quiet—and to see how a life shaped by silence changed the way Hungarian modernism speaks. Budapest.
