The Modern History Collection
The creation of the Modern History Collection has begun in the 1960-ies, with the initial aim to collect objects and documents related to the worker movement. At first, documents, archive pictures and photo negatives were inventoried together, and the objects were treated separately. But a new principle has appeared quite soon, according to which everything that was not pertaining to ethnography (cultural anthropology), archeology and/or applied arts, was transferred to the modern history collection. But later on, collection management has become professionally grounded, and awareness was created viewing its importance. The negatives, archive photos and the data base were separated from the documents, and they formed a new museal unit. Those weapons which did not result from archeological research also joined this collection. There has begun the sistematic collecting of groups of objects, pictures, documents. A main direction was the research of handicrafts, small workshops. The development of picture archives was established by the “One school – 100 old pictures” contest. Many objects, documents and images offered by the historical collections became permanent exhibits for the permanent exhibition organized in 1978. During the 1980s, the exhibitions of handicrafts, the local history exhibition of Szakadát and almost the entire material of the Völgységi Múzeum from Bonyhád were the results of the activity of the researchers in modern history. The collection of pictures and objects developed further on in that decade, and, as a result, we offered our greatest values to the public during the exhibiton of history of photography in 1993. The background itself was made up of photos and postcards for our exhibition entitled Images brought to life – a small town at the century-turn. We focused the development of our collections and systematic research work on that very exhibition – and that has generated a spectacular growth. The collecting of political and election materials after the change of regime (1989) has also become part of the collecting activity. As an extra to the temporary exhibitions, we keep collecting objects to show the 20th century, thus preparing the new permanent exhibition. One may see in the collection of objects over ten thousand items consisting of pieces of furniture, clothing, textiles, appointments, coins, workshops, articles for personal use, flags, etc. In the photo archive we preserve pictures form 1840-1970, out of which a few were made with special techniques, such as dagerrotypes, pannotypes, chromotypes etc., and we have many illustrated postcards, family pictures and photos from public life, as well. Among the more than 10,000 negatives of special interest, there are the collections of coloured glass slides relating about the history of silk, those of artworks (paintings) and the glass slides of Mutschenbacher, the mason. An important part of our collection of weapons consists of the exotic pieces brought by Mór Wosinsky from his trip in the Orient. In the document collection there are, from the 18th century on, family documents, acts of guilds, other organizations, documents pertaining to the history of the museum, posters, newspapers, advertising materials. In the date base we have deposited manuscripts, as well as data regarding the activity of the museum.