National Identity and Hungarian Plan to Repurchase Lost Works

The decision to buy seven pieces from the disputed Sevso Hoard surprised many in the media but the Wall Street Journal explains that Hungary’s government had already announced a massive program to repurchase some of the nation’s lost cultural treasures:

Hungary’s central bank said in January that it plans to spend 100 million euros ($136.8 million) by the end of 2018 on buying Hungarian works of art that have ended up in foreign hands during the country’s eventful history. Visual art as well as literature plays a core role to define Hungarian identity. The cultivation of a sense of national togetherness is among the main goals of the current government [...] “Hungarians have survived throughout the ages because they have been feeding on the 1,000-year-old cultural heritage of the Hungarian Kingdom, the statehood, only morsels of which have survived,” said Mária Prokopp, a professor of Medieval and Renaissance Art at the Eötvös Lóránd University in Budapest. The goal of the central bank’s art program “is to repatriate the highest possible number of major works of art” to protect and treasure the nation’s cultural legacy, the National Bank of Hungary said.

Marion Maneker, 'Sevso Just Beginning for Hungary's Central Bank Art Purchase Program', Art Market Monitor March 31, 2014