Attila Horányi is the director of the Institute for Theoretical Studies, and has been holding lectures at the university about art and design since 2002. He used to be the head of the Art and Design Theory BA, then the Design Theory MA programme. Along with András Ferkai, he took part in the creation and continuous development of both programmes.
Biography
He graduated from the ELTE Art History-English programme in 1991, and he defended his doctoral dissertation in 2009, at the Aesthetics programme of the ELTE Doctoral School of Philosophy. While his university thesis focused on the symbol theory of Erwin Panofsky, his doctoral thesis analysed the autonomy of art, as well as its opportunities and importance. Between 1995 and 1996, he held a Fulbright Scholarship for seven months at the Northwestern University Anthropology department.
Between 1991 and 1995, he was a teacher at the Francisan Secondary School in Szentendre. From 1992, he was an external lecturer at the University of Pécs, then worked as an assistant lecturer there between 1994 and 2004. He has been a teacher at MOME since 2002. In 2009, he became the head of the Art and Design Theory BA programme. After 10 years he became the head of the Design Theory MA programme, a post which he held for two years. Together with András Ferkai, he has played a major role in the creation and continuous development of both programmes. He has been a member of the MOME Senate since 2010, the current cycle marking his fourth in a row. He has been the head of the Institute for Theoretical Studies since 2021.
Between 2006 and 2010 he was a member, and later the head of the College of Photography at the National Cultural Fund of Hungary (NKA). Between 2013 and 2015, he was a member of the panel for the OTKA Research on Art and Culture, and between 2015 and 2017 he was the head of the panel for the Robert Capa Hungarian Photography Grand Prize. Since 2018 he has been the art director of the International Artist in Residence of Debrecen with Lajos Csontó and Szabolcs Süli-Zakar.
He also works actively as an art critic. His writings are published mainly in the Műértő journal. He has been a board member of the Hungarian Faculty of the International Association of Art Critics (AICA) since 2016, and was the director for two cycles. He was recognized for his art criticism with the Lajos Németh Award in 2009, with the Opus Mirabile Award in 2013, and with the Horváth Béla Art Foundation Art Critic Award in 2019.