On Buda Castle Hill, the Hungarian National Gallery is filling late autumn and early winter with dance, tours, kid-friendly workshops, and deep dives into Hungarian modernism. From moustaches as social code to theatrical craft labs and an artist who painted sunlight into quiet rooms, the calendar turns the museum into a lively crossroads of art, history, and play.
Movement Meets Visual Art
EX-POSE(S) opens the month with a dance performance probing the edges between body, movement, and visual art. Expect a conversation in motion between contemporary dance and image-making—a live laboratory where choreography treats the gallery as a stage and the eye as a partner.
Italian-Language Highlights
Twice this season, Italian-speaking visitors can join a guided circuit through Hungarian art from the Middle Ages to today, with a special nod to the 19th and 20th centuries. The tour threads masters, movements, and yes, a possible cameo by Dante among the canvases. Dates are November 7 and December 12 in Budapest.
Fashion Through Paint
Állandó változásban – Divattörténet a festményeken asks what style decreed in baroque splendor and cool classicism, and how women’s towering updos gave way to bobbed hair. Part of the Autumn Festival of Museums, it flips through centuries of fashion and costume history as seen in paintings, mapping taste, status, and the politics of dress.
Create: From Canvas to Canvas
Alkoss! – Vászonról vászonra salutes Adolf Fényes (Fényes Adolf) on the 80th anniversary of his death with The Pictures of Silence, then hands you a brush. After the exhibition, participants paint one-of-a-kind aprons inspired by Fényes’s colors and motifs—domestic wear meets gallery glow, turning the artist’s world into wearable objects.
The Big Moustache Panorama
Kackiás, twisted, outlaw-thick: facial hair is never just hair. A guided tour spotlights history, fashion, and all who wore a moustache or beard as a statement, signaling order, masculinity, or rebellion. A lighthearted way to read identity through whiskers.
Kids Take the Stage
Színezd újra! – múzeumi műhely gyerekeknek transforms the gallery into a theater workshop across several November dates. Children step into artworks, try on roles, write mini-dramas, and craft masks, puppets, headpieces, and even set designs. One rule: it’s all play, from kings and queens to farmhands and goose-girls.
Look, Mom! Sunlit Everyday Life
Two family-friendly tours—Mama, nézd! – Napfényes hétköznapok and its English twin, Look at that, Mom! – Sunny Days—travel through Adolf Fényes’s quiet interiors, gleaming market scenes, and humbly radiant rooms. The conversations drift from a rural yard in the shade of French Impressionism to what a Szolnok veranda might share with Paris, and what century-old genre paintings whisper about ordinary joys and sorrows. The English-language date offers Pictures of Tranquillity alongside relevant permanent works.
Young Explorers and Saint Martin’s Day
Kaland a Galériában marks Saint Martin’s Day (Márton-nap) with kid-focused tours: 10:30–11:15 for ages 6–9, then 11:30–12:15 for ages 10–13. Think stories, symbols, and looking closely, scaled to curious eyes and shorter attention spans.
Adolf Fényes, Up Close
A focused tour, Fényes Adolf és a szolnoki művésztelep, folds the Pictures of Silence memorial show into the permanent collection, tracing the artist’s roots, the Szolnok artists’ colony he helped found, and the glowing stillness that makes his scenes linger.
Toddlers in Velvet Parlors
Tipegők – Kisasszonyok és úrfik takes tiny visitors into the world of elegant homes and salons. How did young ladies and little gentlemen dress, live, and pass the time in days gone by? Expect gentle time travel tailored to the stroller set.
From Crypt to Dome
Explore the Gallery – From the Crypt to the Dome and Épületséta – Kriptától a kupoláig lead you through the former Royal Palace: the Habsburg Palatine Crypt, the building’s secrets, and the panoramic dome. The Advent edition returns in December for a seasonal spin with the same epic view over Budapest.
The Eight: Short Life, Big Shock
Nyolcak – Előre meghirdetett tárlatvezetés accompanies the Lajos Tihanyi (Tihanyi Lajos) retrospective with a look at The Eight, the group that erupted from 1909 to 1912—three years, three shows, a quake in Hungarian culture akin to a scientific and technological revolution. They entered as the Keresők, the Seekers, and left the scene changed.
Lajos Tihanyi at 140
Lázadó formák, merész színek marks the 140th anniversary of Tihanyi’s birth with a major life’s-work exhibition: key paintings, graphics, and personal objects. Deaf from childhood, Tihanyi shaped soundless color into a personal visual voice, without academic schooling, and became one of modern Hungarian painting’s most original figures—and a pillar of The Eight.
Lecture: The Last Painter of Beauty
A szépség utolsó festője: Fényes Adolf features art historian Gábor Bellák peeling back layers you won’t catch in the gallery halls: stories, connections, and oddities that only appear under the magnifying glass, enriching the exhibition experience with backstage intel.
Gilded Holidays
Alkoss! – Aranyló ünnep celebrates St. Nicholas Day by bathing in the glow of Gothic altarpieces and the history of gilding. After the tour, participants decorate small table runners with altar-inspired motifs in gold paint—holiday table bling with medieval roots.
Advent Calm, Workshop Warmth
Szellemi fitnesz – Karácsonyi csoda invites you into the quiet world of paintings and altars during Advent. It’s a slow walk into the season’s spiritual depth and beauty, followed by a studio session to turn that mood into making.
Toddlers, Falling Stars
Tipegők – Hullócsillagok follows a bright celestial sign through the winter dark into the realm of ancient altars. Listen for angelic songs, imagine a crunching snow walk, explore the possibilities tucked into white paint, then craft something festive to take home.
Ongoing Exhibitions and Oddities
A Lélegző fény maps spiritualism, theosophy, and Buddhism in Hungary around 1900. A csend képei. Fényes Adolf (1867–1945) runs through early January, while Tót Endre: Éjszakai látogatás a múzeumban offers a nocturnal encounter with the museum itself. For the seeker: Okkult tudományok tegnap és ma digs into Hermes Trismegistus and the Corpus Hermeticum, and multiple dates bring an authentic Japanese tea ceremony into the palace’s stone-and-light embrace.
All events take place in Budapest. Bring curiosity—and maybe a scarf for the dome.
