The State Audit Office of Hungary (SAO) has completed three audits to examine whether the audited museums managed the cultural assets entrusted to them appropriately.
As part of its audit of the management of cultural assets, the SAO examined the activities of the Museum of Fine Arts, the Hungarian National Museum, and the Petőfi Literary Museum. Among other things, the audit assessed whether the internal regulations on the expansion of the audited museums’ collection, as well as the registration, disposal, and lending activities and their practical application complied with legal and other sectoral requirements.
The Museum of Fine Arts recently commented in the press on the decisions of the Public Procurement Arbitration Committee, which criticised the museum. In this regard, the SAO draws attention to the fact that the public procurement of works of art is indeed special in many respects, which is why the Act on Public Procurement also applies a specific set of procedural rules in these cases, taking these special features into account. Failure to comply with these rules or unlawful circumvention of them by an institution manager is out of the question. As with all other legislation governing the operation of institutions, full compliance with these rules is expected. No institution may make compliance with the relevant legislation contingent on whether it considers the legislation to be realistic or expedient.
The reports in Hungarian are available here: