The ways things worked out, in 1989 my physicist husband István Diószegi won a Post-Doctoral Fellowship at Stony Brook, and I joined him with our two young sons. We didn’t know at the time that the acronym SUNY (State University of New York) didn’t refer to Manhattan, which from the Budapest perspective is equivalent to New York, but rather to New York State, and that Stony Brook was on Long Island, some 100 kilometers from the city. Thus, Miklós became my first "New York connection", and he remained my principle point of reference even as my New York network expanded.
I became a regular at the „Hotel Müller”. We became like family to the extent that my sons also stayed with him on their jaunts to the City. In fact, through me, other art historians including Júlia Szabó, Judit Szabadi, Hedvig Turai, Katalin Bakos and Gábor Andrási expanded the range of guests at this unusual cultural refuge.
That Miklós would welcome scientists and artists was not so surprising for a scientist-collector – one would perhaps expect as much. What is unusual about him – beyond the sheer generosity of extending hospitality that made it possible for the likes of us to stay in a city with prohibitive accommodation costs – is that he welcomed art historians as well, something less obvious.

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Illustration:
Luca Gőbölyös, Brooklyn Bridge

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