The Hungarian National Gallery houses the country’s largest public collection, tracing how Hungarian fine art took shape and evolved. Inside the former royal palace, visitors find permanent and temporary exhibitions, tours in Hungarian and foreign languages, themed programs, family days, festivals, and concerts. Kids get plenty, too: creative clubs, art education sessions, and summer camps are all on the calendar.
Advent Music in the Halls
On December 14, the Gallery hosts an Advent concert featuring students in vocational training and teachers from the Zoltán Kodály Hungarian Choral School. It’s a Sunday program promising varied musical experiences, tuned to the season’s warmth. Budapest’s historic setting only sharpens the glow.
From Crypt to Dome: A Palace Walk
Also on December 14, an architectural tour opens the doors to the palace’s hidden marvels. Expect the Habsburg Palatine Crypt, the dome with its sweeping panorama, and other special corners of the building. It’s a backstage pass to the National Gallery’s own story and the collections that define it. All in Budapest, all under that monumental silhouette on the hill.
Toddlers, Meteors, and Sparkle
On December 16, Tipegők – Hullócsillagok (Toddlers – Shooting Stars) invites the tiniest art lovers into a quiet winter afternoon. A bright celestial cue leads families into the world of gorgeous, centuries-old altarpieces. There’s angelic song, an imaginary stroll through a snow-fresh landscape, and hands-on holiday making after a roam among the galleries. Budapest turns into a soft, white workshop of wonder.
Look at That, Mom! Reflections of Motherhood
On December 18, a guided program in English traces how the tender image of mothers and children re-emerges in modern and contemporary art after the Middle Ages. December, when the birth of the most famous child comes into focus, sets the tone. The theme is intimate, timeless, and startlingly fresh in the Gallery’s Budapest rooms.
Holiday Moods with Adolf Fényes
December 20 brings a tour steeped in seasonal sensation—flavors, snowy vistas, Christmas toys, angelic music, and the scent of pine. The spotlight is the Adolf Fényes memorial exhibition, complemented by related works from the permanent collection. It’s a fragrant, visual, and musical plunge into festivities in Budapest.
Family Day: Christmas with Csontváry
Also on December 20, the Gallery’s Family Day rolls together art, play, and holiday buzz. If you’re craving something special before Christmas, this is it: a Budapest day of creating, discovering, and sharing the seasonal spark, with Csontváry as a guiding star.
Rebel Forms, Bold Colors: Lajos Tihanyi at 140
On December 21, 27, 28, 29, and 30, and again on January 9, 11, and 17, a special retrospective celebrates the 140th birthday of Lajos Tihanyi. His key paintings, graphic works, and personal objects come together in Budapest for a rare, comprehensive view. Deaf from childhood, Tihanyi conjured color and form from silence, forging a distinctive voice in paint without academic training. He became one of the most original members of the Nyolcak (The Eight) and a singular figure in 20th-century Hungarian art. Several dates include guided tours to deepen the dive into his language of shape and hue.
Kids’ Studio: Color It Anew!
On January 7 and 14, the Color It Anew! workshop turns the Gallery into a detective playground. Children track the secrets of Lajos Tihanyi, scrutinizing dozens of works, hunting for hidden details, and piecing together a larger puzzle. The sleuthing flows into making: “forging” paintings, crafting composite faces, and experimenting with photo manipulation. Budapest becomes the lab where curiosity leads to creation.
Look at That, Mom! Sunny Days
On January 8, the English-language tour explores the exhibition Pictures of Tranquillity and views Adolf Fényes’s works alongside permanent collection pieces. Fényes (1867–1945) shines in quiet rooms, glowing daylight, and scenes where the ordinary hums with meaning.
Italian-Language Tour
On January 9, a visita guidata in italiano introduces the greats of Hungarian art from the Middle Ages to today, with special attention to the 19th and 20th centuries. Authors, movements, and maybe even an encounter with Dante—Budapest to Rome in a few gallery steps.
Adolf Fényes, Up Close
On January 10, a guided tour unpacks Fényes’s luminous interiors, lively market scenes, and everyday-life tableaux at the turn of the 19th–20th centuries. How does a rural courtyard live in the shadow of French Impressionism? What does a veranda in Szolnok say to Paris? These genre moments, more than a century old, still whisper about simple joys and sorrows. Budapest’s spaces trace those sunlit threads.
Curator’s Cut: Tihanyi 140
On January 15, curator Mariann Gergely leads a tour through Tihanyi’s legacy. Until the 1970s, Hungarian audiences mostly knew his work from black-and-white reproductions. Fifty-five years ago, his estate made a dramatic journey from Paris to the collection of the Hungarian National Gallery. The story, like the art, is bold and cross-border.
Mama, Look! The Silence Speaks
Also on January 15, a family-friendly guided session explores how Tihanyi’s childhood illness and resulting deafness and muteness shaped an avant-garde life, turning disadvantage into a striking artistic edge. Budapest frames a conversation about resilience, perception, and the eloquence of quiet.
January Continues
On January 17, the Tihanyi retrospective returns with guided insights. And the month rolls on, with Budapest’s National Gallery balancing history and today, stillness and spectacle, scholarship and play.
