Ludwig Museum

Inside Museum of Modern Art - Ludwig Muzéum, Budapest

Museums of modern art are unusual buildings, if you think about it. Being artists, we belong to the regular visitors of such places. From the multitudes of exhibited objects we can remember only a few that mattered to us, yet we carry away a distinct impression of the building complex in it's entirety. Afterwards, it is hard to determine to what extent the museum as a building co-contributes to our memory and appreciation of the artworks.

Art museums are furnished to serve the arts, to give visitors room to enjoy the collections and the theme shows in the best possible conditions. In most museums for contemporary art, the spaces are reduced to white cubes, preferably evenly and discreetly lit. 'Distracting' facilities such as wall sockets, light switches, heating elements, climate control, fire hoses, sprinklers or fuse boxes have disappeared from sight or have been camouflaged, with the exception of seating facilities for wards or visitors. Passage ways are wide to accommodate large groups. Floors are made to be durable, discreet in tone and easy to clean. The museum as an institution and as a building complex is entirely geared towards the art industry.

Despite all the efforts to make the environment of the artworks as unobtrusive and invisible as possible, the spaces maintain a very specific presence that cannot be done away with. This is the paradox of the white cube. Designed to be invisible, the spaces only become all the more present, albeit in a different and more lasting manner than the actual artworks presented in them.

This phenomenon is what we intend to capture with the Inside Museums of Modern Art series. We are not so much interested in the architecture of these spaces as in the impressions they leave on the visitors. Therefore, we only photograph during exhibitions and capture what you see when looking away from the artworks.