Added by Jason Edward Kaufman on August 23 2011, at 1:26 pm
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Budapest is not exactly a hotbed of contemporary art. Curators there tell me people simply aren’t interested. Mounting a survey of artists from across Europe to mark Hungary’s recent presidency of the E.U. seemed like a recipe for failure. The city's MFA rounded up big shots like Jaume Plensa, Magdalena Abakanowicz, and two dozen others.
But how would they get the locals to come look?
The answer: they set the sculptures on the surface of a lake in a popular park! It’s part clever idea and part gimmick, but when I saw the aquatic sculpture park teeming with rowboats it seemed evident that “Art on Lake” (through Sept. 4) had done the trick -- luring the under-exposed public to test the waters of contemporary art.
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