A Debreceni Déri Múzeum Évkönyve 1948-1956 (Debrecen, 1957)

Balogh István dr.: Jelentés a Múzeum 1948-1956. évi működéséről

The acute problem of how to store the non-displayed material of the Museum was solved in the course of the past eight years. In possession of appropriate store-rooms, a great part of the restored and scientifically controlled material in due arrangement has been placed in boxes, preserved of further decaying and is at the disposal of scientific research workers. The scientific elaboration of the material of the collections was running parallely to the restoring work. First the inventories were reviewed to state the losses and damages caused by the war activities and then a more appropriate card-index was introduced for the different branches. This way 8000 pieces, 20% of the stock, have been filed by now. The progress of the work was rather slow at the beginning because of the urgency of the restoring work and the lack of appropriate store-rooms, then there was a temporary lack of experts for the special collections. The growth of the material both in number and scientific value was considerable in the past eight years. It totals 6850 pieces of which a third part is gift. Prominent acquisitions by branches are as follows : Archaeology : Avar graveyard from the 8 —9th century A. D. (Hajdúdorog); Bronze Age store-find (Debrecen-Dombostanya; pi. III.) gravefield from the 9th century A. D. (Ártánd). Ethnography

: Tools and products of popular handicraft (bootmakers, buttonweavers, hatters, potters). Regional History

: Documents and photo-pictures mainly from the 19th century on Debrecen's intellectual and economical life. Applied Arts: Goldsmith wares of Debrecen (p. 9, fig. 1—2.); furnitures from the 16 —17th centuries (PI. IV.); ceramics from the 18th century. Fine Arts : Hungarian plaquette collection of recent origin (589 pieces; PI. VI — VII.) ; products of Hungarian painters from the 19 —20th centuries. (PI. VIII.) The scientific collaborators of the Museum were considerably active in literary work. 25 papers and articles, based on original researches, in ethnography, history of arts and archaeology were published in special reviews during the past eight years. Parallel to the permanent expositions of the Museum there were organized occasional and provisional expositions too. Their number was 50 in the past eight-year period, and had 380.850 visitors. In 1951 a change took place in the sponsoring authority of the Museum. The sponsorship was taken over by the government and the Museum became an organic part of the general Hungarian museum organization. The change has proved to be fruitful for the Museum especially in scientific respect. The past period saw the fiftieth anniversary of the Museum. It was celebrated in 1956 with a memorial exposition and a one-week series of lectures. 18