The Hungarian National Gallery is the largest public collection charting the birth and growth of Hungarian fine art, and it isn’t quieting down for winter. Permanent and temporary exhibitions, guided tours in Hungarian and foreign languages, themed programs, family days, festivals, and concerts are all in the mix. Kids get creative clubs, arts education workshops, and summer camps—plus a heavy dose of hands-on discovery all January long in Budapest.
Look at that, Mom! – Sunny Days (Jan 8)
A gentle entry into the month: a guided tour through Pictures of Tranquillity, paired with stops at Adolf Fényes’s (1867–1945) paintings within the permanent collection. Expect intimate interiors where sunlight sluices through modest rooms, and a calm, unhurried cadence to kick off the year.
Rebel Forms, Bold Colors – The Art of Lajos Tihanyi (Jan 9, 11, 17, 23, 25)
The headline event celebrates the 140th anniversary of Lajos Tihanyi’s birth with a special career-spanning exhibition. The show gathers his most important paintings and graphics alongside personal objects, sketching a vivid portrait of a singular voice in 20th-century Hungarian art. Tihanyi lost his hearing in childhood and pulled colors and forms out of silence, forging a distinctive language of painting without academic training. He became a key figure of The Eight (Nyolcak) and one of the era’s most original Hungarian artists. Multiple guided tours illuminate the works across the month, and the Jan 25 tour includes sign language interpretation, broadening access to his world.
Adolf Fényes’s Luminance (Jan 10)
Fényes’s canvases open doors to scenes where sunlight finds even the most unassuming interiors, where market life thrums with folktale vitality, and where everyday moments matter as much as grand history. The tour drifts through landscapes and intimate rooms at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, asking how a peasant courtyard fits under the shadow of French Impressionism, what links a veranda in Szolnok to Paris, and what these century-old genre paintings still tell us about simple joys and sorrows.
Toddlers – Snowflake Dance (Jan 13, 27)
Pull on the softest mittens and warmest snow boots: a winter adventure for the tiniest visitors takes over the galleries. See the forest slip into white, spot hidden colors in snowbound scenes, and sing, tell stories, and dance with the snowflakes together.
Color It Anew! – Museum Workshop for Kids (Jan 14, 21, 28)
January’s sessions turn children into detectives. The Gallery’s spaces hum with mysterious stories, and junior sleuths chase the clues to Lajos Tihanyi’s secrets. Dozens of works get a close read as kids hunt for meaningful hidden details—until the puzzle snaps into place. Creation is built into the investigation: they’ll “forge” paintings, assemble phantom portraits, and experiment with photo manipulation, blending play with art for a lively final reveal.
TIHANYI 140: Curator’s Tour with Mariann Gergely (Jan 15)
A backstory with twists: for decades, Hungarians knew Tihanyi’s works mostly from black-and-white reproductions. Fifty-five years ago, his estate took a dramatic path from Paris into the Hungarian National Gallery’s collection. Curator Mariann Gergely’s tour tells that tale through the objects themselves.
Look at that, Mom! – Silence Speaks (Jan 15)
This family-friendly event focuses on how Tihanyi’s childhood illness and subsequent deafness shaped his life and art. The session reveals how a seeming disadvantage turned into a rare strength, making his paintings deeply and unmistakably his own.
The Person Behind the Palette (Jan 16)
Art historian Gergely Barki leads an unconventional tour through TIHANYI 140, probing personality, process, and the zigzags of a pioneering career.
Italian-Language Tour (Jan 16)
An Italian-guided walk spans Hungarian art from the Middle Ages to modernity, spotlighting the 19th and 20th centuries. Keep an eye out—Dante might make a cameo among the canvases.
Nude Sculptures from the Fin de Siècle (Jan 18)
The human nude is one of art’s oldest themes, yet its depiction flexes with each era’s ideals. This guided tour explores the refreshed exhibition of 19th–20th-century nude sculptures, tracing changing forms, poses, and the standards they mirrored.
Mental Fitness – New Year, New Style (Jan 21)
Artists who switched lanes take the spotlight. Painters like János Vaszary, József Rippl-Rónai, and Aurél Bernáth worked in multiple styles, sometimes so different you’d never guess they were by the same hand. After a gallery stroll, try on one of Rippl-Rónai’s styles in the studio and create a piece of your own.
Online Guided Tour: Tihanyi (Jan 22)
Mark the Day of Hungarian Culture without leaving the couch. An online guided tour opens the Tihanyi anniversary exhibition to anyone, anywhere, offering a deep dive into his painting from home.
Create! – Abstract Immersion Painting (Jan 17)
Abstract art gives imagination room to roam. In January, the workshop introduces heavy hitters like Sean Scully, Judit Reigl, and Simon Hantaï, whose legacies anchor abstraction. After a stroll through the galleries, participants paint striking abstract works of their own, testing geometry, color play, and free-flowing brushwork.
Writer’s Eye – Rita Halász’s Personal Tour (Jan 17)
Writer and art historian Rita Halász leads a subjective, writerly walk: Embroidered in Concrete (Betonba hímezve)—focusing on resonance, narrative, and the textures of looking.
Adventure in the Gallery – Unusual Faces (Jan 24)
Two kid-focused tours go deep on portraiture: 10:30–11:15 for ages 6–9, and 11:30–12:15 for ages 10–13. Expect close looking, questions that spark curiosity, and a dose of play.
Doubles and Gaps in Tihanyi’s Oeuvre (Jan 24)
Two or none: art historian Gergely Barki lectures on the duplications and hiatuses running through Tihanyi’s body of work, tracing the puzzles of attribution, creative interruption, and return.
Budapest’s National Gallery turns January into a living map of Hungarian art—past and present, quiet and bold, intimate and expansive—with room for every age to join in.
