The 20th century permanent exhibition dealing with the most important artists and aspirations until the end of the Second World War is located on the recently renovated second-floor of the museum. The time period we concentrate on is 1896 to 1945, with 150 paintings, 30 statues and 200 coins.

The exhibition is introduced by the post-1945 changes, works of art created in the spirit of progressiveness but at the same time linked to pre-war antecedents and testifying to a synthesis of styles that existed side by side and influenced each other (Expressionism, Constructivism, Surrealism, etc.). Visitors can see works from the 1950s: genre paintings, depictions of work and workers, and portraits in accordance with the dictatorship's arts policy of the day, these are stylistically homogeneous and follow the themes laid down at this time. In the next rooms there are works by a new generation.

Non-figurative trends existing in parallel appear as adaptations of Abstract Expressionism as well as of (Neo-)Geometrical, Structuralist and Organic endeavours. Figurative tendencies, versions of Pop Art and Hyperrealism, also significant at the time, are on view in the last section. On the corridor opening from the last row of rooms radical Avant-Garde works can be found primarily built on the use of photography, consisting largely of action documentations, and objects.

Our exhibition, presenting 19th-century art, surveys the work of almost 100 years, beginning in the late 18th century. Here we can see almost all the important works from the time of National Romanticism that have for generations determined the national visual memory. Including such major emblematic works of historical painting as The Women of Eger, The Mourning of László Hunyadi and The Christening of Vajk, the most significant historical paintings by Viktor Madarász, Mór Than, Sándor Liezen-Mayer, Bertalan Székely, and Gyula Benczúr fill two impressive rooms on the first floor.

In the adjacent rooms the visitor can see landscapes by Károly Markó as well as major works by József Borsos, Miklós Barabás, Mihály Zichy, Gyula Benczúr, and Bertalan Székely. A separate room presents the work of the greatest renewers of 19th-century Hungarian art: Pál Szinyei-Merse, Mihály Munkácsy and László Paál. The one-time ballroom of the palace displays works of Naturalist and early plein-air painting that in many instances paved the way to Modernism. Works by László Mednyánszky, Géza Mészöly, Lajos Deák-Ébner, Simon Hollósy, and István Csók form the backbone of this unit.

The exhibition, opened in 2002, surveys the most important trends in the fine arts in Hungary from the generation that founded the Nagybánya artists' colony in the 1890s (Simon Hollósy, Károly Ferenczy) to the mid-1940s. In line with a new method of arrangement, works are not displayed in strict chronological order; each room is an independent unit in its own right.

The work of the most important artists (József Rippl-Rónai, Tivadar Csontváry Kosztka, Ferenc Medgyessy, Róbert Berény, Gyula Derkovits) and groups of artists (the Eight, the Activists, the Rome School, the Gresham Circle) is presented by a continually altering selection of paintings.