Are you interested in the stories of legendary sculpture? Would you like to touch some “good luck” statues while in Budapest, but don’t know where they are? Keep reading! And of course, even if you simply want to know what it is that bronze figure, before which you are standing right now.
Shame or not, there are many cultural black spots even in our closest environment, not to speak about the unknown places. Especially when we are abroad: to get to know the cultural history and the curiosities of a new city is a real challenge. None of the guidebooks can mention every public artwork, but sometimes it would be nice to get more information than a name and the year, that is usually indicated by the table next to it.
But I could (and maybe should) have started this article like "All you ever wanted to know about the Hungarian statues", because we are introducing the country's only interactive online map of sculpture, with national coverage and answer all of your questions. Kozterkep.hu (“Public Map”) started in 2006 has now hundreds of active members who help create and maintain the database. The result of their work is the more than 22,000 data sheet that covers the whole country, in fact, already beyond the border.
photo:facebook.com
Members of Köztérkép research, photograph and present the public sculptures and other works of art on a voluntary, non-profit basis. The goal is the same since its inception: preserve the frequently changing public art for posterity. If we access the https://www.kozterkep.hu/ website or the team's Facebook page, we can know a whole new world - that is, rather, the old world from a new perspective.
The map, which is to illustrate the history and place of the sculptures, is the crossing of an online database and Google Maps. This way a totally interactive map was created, based on the GPS coordinates of sculptures, where we can search by geographic address, names and titles of the sculptures. But if you don’t know any of these, just suddenly find yourself facing the world's most beautiful wall painting/statue, don’t panic: if you allow the program to identify your location, you will not even have to search! Our immediate environment appears on the interactive map and all public space artworks will be displayed in a minute with descriptions and of course with pictures.
The only downside of the site - at least for now, from our viewpoint - is that it’s only available is Hungarian and generally there are no translation of the descriptions either. But fortunately any translation program can make a decent English version totally understandable, and among the long-term goals they shall endeavor to make the English version of the whole site and opening up to foreign artworks as well.
photo: szoborlap.hu
