Photo of Max Schmidt

The Viennese furniture manufacturer Max Schmidt was the most important interior decorator of early 20th century Hungary. In 1910 he purchased the former monastery of Kiscell and installed his showrooms and a private museum in the building. Schmidt died in 1935 and bequeathed the building and his private collection of artifacts to the municipality of Budapest with the reservation that a museum of decorative arts should be established in it. However, the city auctioned off the larger part of the collection and transferred its own collections of local history and art from the Municipal Museum to the building in Kiscell in 1941.