[Taxacom] Fate of the Hungarian Natural History Museum

[Kenneth Kinman]

Dear All, 
        Well, if their plans are to turn this into a
military school, I definitely think the Hungarians should seriously
rethink their priorities. That it contained a military academy until
1945 is not a tradition I would consider particularly worth returning to
(Nazis or Russians are hardly an imminent threat to them today).     
        However, I am a little disappointed that
arguments against this proposed eviction of the natural history museum
are being mainly based on 200 human mummies from the 18th Century or
ceratopsian dinosaurs (I am obviously in favor of putting dinosaur
research on hold in favor of conservaton of extant species). 
       Therefore, I think that putting more emphasis on
some of the other 10 million artefacts in this museum might be more
fruitful. Especially compared to the limited value of military training
(which I would guess could be done elsewhere anyway). The world clearly
needs to invest more in life (biology and medicine) and less in the
military (death and weapons). Perhaps Hungary would be well advised to
aspire to more peaceful endeavours (like Switzerland). Even the U.S.
seems to be slowly (albeit too slowly) moving in that direction.
Hopefully we are learning the lessons that the 20th Century should have
taught us. Surely Hungary can depend on NATO to protect it in a pinch,
and therefore a military academy is probably not a great investment at
the expense of science in my opinion.   
                    ---------Ken        
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Dan Lahr wrote:
Dear all, 
A while ago someone brought this issue up in Taxacom, and I recently
contacted a Hungarian colleague fo explanation about the very sad
situation. It is unfortunate that such an important museum will face
this destiny, and even more frightening is the prospect that many others
may follow the same path given the current economic situation. I am
pasting here a text that was recently published in Nature about the
situation. Original is here: 
http://www.nature.com/news/2011/110607/full/474139a.html "Hungarian
natural history under threat 
Historical collections given marching orders as government plans
military university at museum site. 
Looking for a new home: 200 human mummies from the eighteenth century,
the remains of rare European dinosaurs and 10 million other artefacts
currently at the Hungarian Natural History Museum, which is facing
eviction later this year. The Hungarian government plans to turn the
historic Budapest building given to the museum after the fall of
communism in 1989 into a university to train the military or the police.
Scientists in Hungary and abroad are shocked by the move because the
imposing 1836 Ludovika building has been extensively renovated for the
museum, and curators are still moving the collections in. They say that
the museum has not been offered an alternative site, and fear that the
collections will have to be stored in crates until a new home is found.
"When the government announced the new university in February, they
described the Ludovika as a long-neglected building. That came as a
surprise to those of us who work there," says József Pálfy, a member
of a joint research team between the museum's palaeontology research
group and the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. But the government
justifies its decision by saying that parts of the building need further
renovations and that using the Ludovika for the new university is in
keeping with tradition ? the building contained a military academy until 
1945. 
The museum employs more than 70 scientists and publishes around 50
papers a year in international journals. In addition to the mummies ?
which were found in a church crypt in Vac in central Hungary and used to
study the history of tuberculosis ? it houses fossils found in western
Hungary from ceratopsian dinosaurs, which were previously thought not to
have lived in Europe. 
The collections, some of which date back to 1802, had been scattered
around the city before the museum was granted the Ludovika buildings in
the early 1990s. The buildings were in disrepair, but the Hungarian
government invested around 10 billion forints (US$53 million) to
refurbish them. The buildings now give the museum 5,000 square metres of
exhibition space, as well as modern research laboratories and three
underground levels for storage. 
András Jávor, state secretary for the Hungarian Ministry of National
Resources, which is responsible for the museum, says that no jobs or
resources will be lost in the reorganization, and that his ministry "is
consulting with the museum about its future location". But Attila ?si, a
palaeontologist in the same research group as Pálfy, whose discovery
of the ceratopsian dinosaur fossils led to a Nature paper last year (A.
?si et al. Nature 465, 466?468; 2010), says that research will suffer if
they are forced to pack up their specimens again. About 100
inter­national researchers use the collections every year, and those
contacted by Nature echo the concerns of their Hungarian colleagues.
"The collections at the museum are unique, and moving them again would
create huge problems for multinational research collaborations," says
Gareth Dyke, a palaeontologist at University College Dublin in Ireland,
who is currently working at the museum. Museum staff had just started to
get comfortable at the Ludovika. "The scientists here are still spending
time checking inventories to make sure all the objects have survived
moving in," says ?si. "After 200 years we got a central building for our
museum," adds István Matskási, its director-general, "and now we do
not know where we will have to go."