In order to allow more visitors to see the works, the museum has extended its hours on several days, says Zsolt Gyarmati, the director of the Csíki Székely Museuem, where the paintings are on display. It has also allowed visitors in free of charge for brief periods, he added.
The exhibition's organisers hope to attract a total of 50,000 visitors by the time it closes on July 15. Gyarmati said the museum had drawn more visitors in the past two months than it usually does in an entire year.
The paintings are on loan from the Hungarian National Gallery, Békéscsaba's Mihály Munkácsy Museum and Imre Pákh, a Hungarian living in America who owns the largest private collection of Munkácsy paintings in the world.
Pákh's loans have resulted in a number of highly popular exhibitions in the last several years, among them ones in Debrecen, Szeged, Békéscsaba, Kaposvár, Miskolc and Pécs. An exhibition of works from his collection shown at the Hungarian National Gallery attracted 360,000 visitors, breaking all records.
Pákh was awarded the Hungarian order of merit, officer's cross for his of his efforts serving "the wide scale promotion of art and the generous support of culture" at a ceremony in the spring of last year.
