The Ludwig Museum is the sole arts museum collecting international and contemporary artworks The Hungarian Cultural government established the museum in 1989. The basis of the collection is 70 works of art by contemporary artists working after 1955. The collection was bestowed by the couple Ludwig and the Ludwig Foundation of Aachen to the Hungarian state.

In 1991, 91 works of art were added to the collection as permanent deposit. At the same time, the first exhibition opened in building "A" at the Palace of Buda, organized by the National Arts Gallery.

The museum that had been managed by Katalin Néray since 1993 was renamed Ludwig Museum Budapest in 1996 and was given independent statues and budget. On occasion of the reopening, the collection was added a significant collection of artworks by Hungarian artists that were first shown at a permanent exhibition opening in December 1996. From 1993 to 2005, the Ludwig Museum opened 150 temporary exhibitions showing the art of the most significant artists of Hungary an abroad.

In 2005 considerable changes took place in the existence of the museum. It moved to the Palace of Arts where the visitors are awaited by collections and exhibitions surrounded by modern museum technology. On three floors of the wing on the Danube side, artworks are displayed on 3300m2. The permanent exhibitions are on 1300m2 while selection of the collection are show non floor two and three.

The showing of the collection opened on 15 March 2005 includes artworks formerly shown and a number of new acquisitions, as well as artworks representing development of the past few years. The exhibition in 1996 presented classic artists (Picasso, American pop-art artists like Oldenburg, Warhol, Rauschenberg, Lichtenstein, etc.), as well as artists from the first half of the nineties. There are several fresh artworks included in the present display and formerly shown popular ones.

One of the most important objectives of the museum has been from the beginning to show Hungarian and Mid-European art in correlation with the art of the west. Peter Ludwig's intention was to help the two ideologically separated worlds, west and east get closer via art. He bought artworks in this sense, eg from non-conformist artists of the Soviet Union and from other East-European artists (Ivan Csujkov, Jurij Albert, Jurij Lejderman, etc) Works of art mirroring East-European avant-garde acquired in the past few years (László Lakner, Krisztián Frey, Dóra Maurer, Imre Bak, György Jovánovics, Ilona Keserü, István Nádler and others, as well as Ana Lupaş, Józef Szajna) are shown parallel with Western tendencies, such as the geometric, minimalist works from the seventies, or the international new painting of the eighties (Baselitz, Lüpertz, Penck, Palladino).

Beginning in the ninetieth, the museum collects artworks by Czech, Slovakian Polish, Romanian, Slovenian etc artists (Jirí David, Roman Ondák, Zbigniew Libera, Zuzanna Janin, Teodor Graur, Dan Perjovschi) systematically.