József Bárdosi started to work at the municipal museum at Vác in 1987 as an art historian specializing in the visual arts. Contemporary art was only part of the museum’s interests, alongside its archaeological and historical collections. After having surveyed the groups of artworks in the possession of the museum, he decided to reformulate the collecting policy. The character of the visual arts collection he started to develop was based on a selection from the (rather incidental) earlier purchases and also on his own research, in which he mapped the different tendencies of mediated realist painting (referred to as “secondary mimesis”) reflecting on societal relations from the 1960s on. The works in the collection purchased by him since are connected either to sur-naturalism, hyperrealism, pop, or neo-mannerism, using photorealistic depiction to formulate their critical thoughts manifested in their style or in the themes depicted. By defining the direction of the collecting process, he also wanted to present an alternative to the postmodern New Painting that was dominant in the 1980s and what he considered “low-principled aestheticisation.” He wanted to collect works that reflect on the social realities of Hungary in the period between 1960 and 1989.