Artpool Art Research Center is an archive, research space, specialist and media library in Budapest, Hungary, dedicated to international contemporary and avant-garde arts, such as Artist's books, artistamp, mail art, visual poetry, sound poetry, conceptual art, fluxus, installation, performance.It was founded in 1979 based on the "Active Archive" conception as a center for the type of avant-garde art that was marginalized by the state-socialist establishment. The "Active Archive does not only collect material already existing 'out there', but the way it operates also generates the very material to be archived".The public archive and library contain unique documents of international and Hungarian avant-garde art and subculture from the 1960s on, such as "correspondence, notes, plans, ideas, interviews, writings, works of art, photo documents, catalogs, invitation cards, bibliographies, chronologies, diagrams, video and sound documents, CD-Roms, etc." Artpool in addition to running its own research projects receives ca. 100 local and foreign researchers, university students, interns, and volunteers yearly. It participates in conferences and in international research groups.
Some of the international avant-garde artists and art-groups who are in the Artpool Archives, and have exhibited and lectured there include: Fluxus artists Ben Vautier, Dick Higgins, Geoffrey Hendricks, Endre Tót, Robert Watts, Jean-Jacques Lebel, Ray Johnson sound poets and performers Jaap Blonk, Paul Panhuysen, Bernard Heidsieck, Tibor Papp, Julien Blaine, Ernst Jandl, mail art and artist's book artists Guglielmo Achille Cavellini, Buster Cleveland, Ginny Lloyd, Anna Banana, Vittore Baroni, Guy Bleus, John Held, Jr., Barbara Rosenthal.