Zalatnai Pál - Kovács Zita: Miskolczy Ferenc 1899-1944 - A Bajai Türr István Múzeum kiadványai 33. (Baja, 2014)
founder and collection raising activities. The foundation of the New Hungarian Collection of Painting and Sculpture in Baja (the first Hungarian contemporary art gallery) is attached to Ferenc Miskolczy's name. The collection of the basic data of the gallery (and the Museum organised after it) and the foundation of the institution were initiated by him together with Imre Oltványi. Oltványi was in Baja in 1935, where he visited mayor dr. Ferenc (Vojnics) Borbíró to the incitement of Miskolczy, and together they promised the mayor that if the city provides place, they collect a 30 to 40-piece contemporary art collection completely free of charge for the future gallery. The 1937 deed of foundation has been the foot-stone of the institutionalization of the subsequent Türr István Museum. Ferenc Miskolczy's excellence, however was the quest of István Nagy's legacy (died in 1937 in Baja), organization of the memorial exhibition, then the acquisition of the 39-piece collection of the artist for the gallery. István Nagy and Ferenc Miskolczy settled down in Baja almost simultaneously. By the time Miskolczy got known the epochal painter, he was seriously ill. However from the year of István Nagy's death, Miskolczy nurtured his artistic and spiritual legacy with never fleeting passion. He also had a significant role in allocating the legacy of Vencel Ágoston, János Gáspár and Ede Teles to Türr István Museum. The peer, the colleague, the witness Ferenc Bárdos wrote about Ferenc Miskolczy's civic activities as follows: „I quote the former Haynald street collection, which served as the basis for today Türr István Museum, where we collected every reservable material with the diligence of the bee, when several values were getting lost due to wartime affairs. Me as the younger servant ran you close: we walked from house to house, knocked, inquired about antiquities... we had to hurry, because we felt that every day of deferment goes hand in hand with insurmountable disadvantage: the old one was lost, perished, supplanted by the thousand manufactured products of the running new world. We went by bicycle to the nearby villages. From Szeremle we got a „onewood-carved boat", from Dávod a 150-yearold bed (the owner just lay sick on it, ... very pleased to have received a new one) ... from Ersekcsanád, a ladies leather coat embroidered with motif of Sárköz from Lajos Szabó's place... I remember the shaping of the museum's halls, the first time painting, the arrangement of the collected material, the sorting of the nearly 20-thousand-volumes Hadik-Barkóczy book material lay down in the great exhibition room of Roosevelt square as we standing-kneeling passed along them to their final destination on the round-scaffolded, levelled bookshelves designed by you... I remember the preparation of the exhibitions, many times stretched into late evenings (the concept of doing it for money or overtime was not yet known)... I remember the 54
