Estók János szerk.: A Magyar Mezőgazdasági Múzeum Közleményei 2005-2007 (Budapest, 2007)

MÚZEUMTÖRTÉNETI TANULMÁNYOK - Fülöp Éva Mária: A Magyar Mezőgazdasági Múzeum gyűjteményeinek gyarapodása az elmúlt száz esztendőben

The history and acquisitions of the collections of the Museum of Hungarian Agriculture in the past 100 years M. ÉVA FÜLÖP In Europe the claim to founding museums was in close connection with the process of forming the bourgeois nation-states. The exhibitions mirroring the progress of achievement concerning middle-class status and industrialization played an important part in the creation and later enrichment of public collections. The establishment of the museum of Hungarian Agriculture and history of its collections bore closely upon the exhibition celebrating the 1000th anniversary of the existence of the Hungarian State and the world exhibitions, too. Today's collections of the museum were founded with the objects selected from the agricultural, hunting, ethnographical and other valuable materials of the National Millenary Exhibition which was organized in 1896 in the City Park of Budapest. At the invitation of the Agricultural Ministry the exhibitors donated the abundance of the objects displayed in the agricultural section to the museum. After the exhibition had been closed, the material of the museum was being enriched by means of donations and bequests, the purchases of the agricultural ministry as well as outlandish and inland exhibitions. The museum collection based on the exhibition material originally enriched the show-pieces of the world exhibitions, as well: thus one part of the Hungarian agricultural, forestry and hunting objects shown at the Paris World Exhibition in 1900 came already from the Agricultural Museum; even the pavilion was built on the model of Vajdahunyad Castle. Some information on the early history of the collections can be gathered on the basis of the register called „entering of objects in the receipts 1897—1899" having the names of donors on record. According to the first inventory of the museum 12,120 objects belonged to the collection. The earliest «information subject catalogue" of the museum was made in 1899. The book including not more than 24 pages is a list of the objects exhibited at the museum which includes 16,211 objects altogether „in groups according to classes". Until the early 20

th century concerning the history of the museum, the word exhibition meant almost the same as the word 'collection' which refers to the era of stock exhibitions. In 1934 the 16th International Agricultural Congress was organized in Budapest, which yielded precedence to timely topics such as soil-improvement, green field-farming, corn- and flour experiment, afforestration of the Great Plain and co-operatives. The areas laid emphasis on by the congress were most highlighted at the exhibitions of the museum, thus these professional fields came into prominence both in the work of the museologists and the collecting work. However, the end of stock exhibitions in the history of museum exhibitions dates from that time. After the damages caused by WW2 had been got rid of, from the 1960s significant upswing was experienced in the respect of both collecting- and recording work. Not only the collection of agricultural, vini- and viticultural and forestry-tools and fittings, but also the numismatic collecting work, the collection of the seeds of cultivated plants and bones of domestic animals as well as the acquisition of agricultural machine- and building models became continuous. More attention was paid to the collection of written sources, too: the systematic enrichment of