Budapest’s Statue Park Museum is a unique outdoor collection of ‘de-commissioned’ statuary, memorials, and monuments from the communist era. The original idea, which had first come from a writer, could easily have been perceived as an ironic joke, but instead led to a profound civic process. Since 1989 heated public debate had raged throughout the former Soviet bloc over what to do with these relics. In most cases, the state simply removed everything. In Budapest, however, the elected City Council proposed a process by which each district of the city would decide by referendum the fate its statues. Citizens would have one of three choices for each monument: a) keep it in place; b) have it destroyed; c) contribute it to the Statue Park Museum.

To attempt a democratic process in such a situation was not only a complex undertaking, but highly risky. The vote became a focus for diverse and divisive feelings about the fall of communism. It brought to light pain, hatred, and anger, but also unexpected allegiances and unforeseen, non-ideological, feelings of ownership. It demonstrates that there is never one single ‘collective memory’ of place, but conflicting memories and layers of history. What in the short term proved to be a deeply uncomfortable process may, in the long term, help the city to come to terms with history more profoundly than an overnight ‘erasure’. This is, however, difficult to measure. It is perhaps indicative that, while the museum was finally opened in 1993, it remains unfinished, ostensibly for financial reasons.